Mayor Wants To Give $1,000 Worth Of Bitcoin To All Residents Images: Mayor Jason Stewart, Twitter/Credit:dulezidar/ istock
Jayson Stewart, the mayor of Cool Valley, Missouri, wants to give all 1,500 of the city’s residents $1,000 worth of bitcoin and he has people willing to invest in his plan.
Mayor Stewart is raising funds to make his bitcoin giveaway plan a reality and he has advised residents not to sell the bitcoin immediately but to hold the digital asset, which he likens to digital gold. He recently laid out his plan in an interview with KSDK, an NBC-affiliated TV station, Bitcoin.com reported.
“I would like to see every single household in my city receive some level of bitcoin, whether it be $500 or $1,000,” Stewart said. “We’re putting in place, like, a vesting schedule for bitcoin. The idea is that maybe you don’t touch it for five years before you really get full access to it.”
Stewart was elected mayor of Cool Valley in 2020. The city lies about 9.2 miles Northwest of St. Louis.
“We’re working on ideas like that because that’s my number one concern,” Stewart said. “(If) Someone just sells their bitcoin to pay their car note, and then when bitcoin is sitting at like $500,000 all these years later, they’re going to really regret that.”
Stewart shared his enthusiasm for bitcoin. “I have friends whose lives have been completely changed, like going from working a regular nine to five job to being worth over $80 million in a matter of a few years,” he said.
Most of the money to fund Stewart’s bitcoin giveaway experiment will come from several unnamed BTC investors, he said.
“I have some very supportive donors who have agreed to match any money that I raise up to several millions of dollars. I’m trying to get a few government funds as well to go along with that, or potentially some of the relief money that comes in from the covid relief,” he said.
Stewart’s initiative got positive feedback on Twitter.
Dan Held, director of growth marketing at cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, tweeted simply, “Universal Bitcoin Income”.
“Lets say Cool Valley population is 1200 people now. He literally needs only $1.2 million dollars in order to give every citizen $1000 worth of the soundest money humanity ever discovered”Stackmore.hodl.Sucre @1971Bubble tweeted.
But questioneverything @JulieEd59396831 was skeptical, tweeting, “Beware of gifts from those who want to control you. Strings attached.”
Stewart’s Bitcoin plan is similar to one proposed by Andrew Yang, a candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Coin Telegraph reported.
Yang, who also made an unsuccessful 2021 run for mayor of New York City, said he supported giving every American $1,000 a month in universal basic income (UBI).
Images: Mayor Jason Stewart, Twitter/Credit:dulezidar/ istock
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