By: Barry Horowitz
New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have lost more than $1,000 of his first City Hall paycheck in just four days after converting it into cryptocurrency during a plunge in the market, as was reported by the New York Post. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to The New York Post’s request for comment.
Theo Wayt of The New York Post reports, “In November, Adams first pledged to take his first three paychecks in cryptocurrency as part of a plan to make New York City into the “center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries. But federal Department of Labor regulations ban city governments from paying workers directly in cryptocurrencies, so the mayor’s office said his paycheck would immediately be converted into cryptocurrency using the crypto exchange Coinbase.
Adams made his initial crypto pledge when bitcoin was trading north of $60,000. It has since fallen below $35,000. Asked about bitcoin’s plummeting price in early January, Adams struck an optimistic tone”. The post reported the Mayor told CNBC “Sometimes the best time to buy is when things go down, so when they go back up, you made a good profit.”
The New Post reported “in November, Adams caught flak for quietly flying to the SOMOS conference in Puerto Rico on a private Gulfstream jet owned by the bitcoin billionaire Brock Pierce, who also donated to his campaign. A spokesman said Adams paid for the flight through a travel agent.” Bitcoin and Ethereum are the top Cryptocurrency at the moment. Cryptocurrency is the future of business and technology. If New York City wants to continue to be the epicenter of the financial world, it needs adapt to the changing world and embrace the coming trends.
Adams’ use of his public office to promote the crypto industry drew criticism from at least one upstate New York radical environmental group, Seneca Lake Guardian, which noted that creating and managing cryptocurrency can consume enormous amounts of energy, often produced by power plants that contribute to climate change, AP pointed out.
AP reported: “Mayor Adams is dead wrong, and his ignorance could cost New Yorkers millions of dollars in energy bills while killing local economies, poisoning our water and filling our air with deadly C02 emissions,” the group said in a statement.
State Attorney General Letitia James has investigated cryptocurrency trading platforms and warned last year that investors “should proceed with extreme caution when investing in virtual currencies.”
“Cryptocurrencies are high-risk, unstable investments that could result in devastating losses just as quickly as they can provide gains,” James said.
Washington Post reported:
A dramatic sell-off in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has outpaced a marked retreat in the U.S. stock market, as the Federal Reserve’s pivot from emergency support spooks investors who piled into highflying but risky assets during the pandemic.
The price of bitcoin has fallen from its November highs of nearly $70,000 to now around $35,000. On Saturday, bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, had fallen around 9 percent in just 24 hours. Since the start of the year, it has fallen around 23 percent. Meanwhile, Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, fared even worse, dropping around 15 percent over 24 hours and roughly 35 percent since the new year.
