The new mayor of New York wants to receive his salary with Bitcoin

New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams plans to convert his first paycheck to Bitcoin after he pledged on Thursday to make the city more hospitable to cryptocurrencies. Adams announced in a Twitter post that he would receive the first three salaries in Bitcoin when he becomes mayor. Adams was responding to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who said he would also receive his next Bitcoin salary.

Adams campaign spokesman Evan Thies later clarified that the elected mayor would convert the salary into Bitcoin through an exchange. The city lacks a mechanism to extract wages on everything other than dollars. The announcement was a clear statement of political support for cryptocurrencies, and follows remarks Adams made this week showing he wants to attract more cryptocurrency jobs in New York and possibly create a digital currency for the city.

Cryptocurrencies still face major hurdles as a means of daily payments, in part because they are taxed by the IRS as property. There are also questions about how a Bitcoin-based paycheck would relate to federal labor laws. It is unclear who would control the digital "wallet" the city would have to use to pay Adams.