Blockchain technology is spreading to cities

by Arthur · December 8, 2022

Read the crypto news and you could be forgiven for thinking that landfills will soon be filled with unwanted crypto servers and recycling centers will melt down the remains of unnecessary hard wallets. Exchanges are imploding, values are dropping and it’s not just monkeys who sound fed up with the whole NFT thing.

But look a little further and blockchain technology is still moving forward. One person helping these advances continue is Elijah John Bowdre. Chairman of the Miami Dade County Cryptocurrency Task Force, Bowdre has been involved in Bitcoin since the days twenty dollars could buy a dozen coins and still leave change for a frappuccino.

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Early in Bitcoin

After working for JP Morgan in New York, Bowdre moved to China where he opened a trading business that had made him a millionaire by the time he was twenty-four. The shift to cryptocurrency happened when a friend of a friend asked him to buy a product in China but wanted to pay with Bitcoin.

The year was 2012. Bitcoin was worth around 80 cents and Bowdre had never heard of the currency. “I kind of don’t want to deal with it,” he told The Bad Crypto Podcast. “But I took it to my partner and he said, ‘Hey, you know what? You should look into this. This is the future. Decentralized peer-to-peer cash.’

Watch Chairman Bowdre’s full length interview in episode 657 of The Bad Crypto Podcast. Bowdre took time out of a packed Art Basel 2022 schedule to chat with Bad Crypto co-hosts Joel Comm and Travis Wright.

Leading municipal crypto adoption

Bowdre started trading with Bitcoin. He returned to the US to lead cryptocurrency adoption for Florida’s Dade County. He wrote state blockchain legislation governing virtual assets and currencies and authored legislation for the county’s crypto payment policy.

“We are the first city to actually pay our employees their regular wages and their retirement benefits in crypto,” Bowdre said.

The county is now working on a pilot for a municipal blockchain application. Around 75 businesses have signed up, and are expanding the blockchain technology to the city’s sewage systems, traffic lights and DMV.

“No government currently uses blockchain or crypto protocols. Miami will be the first, and then this pilot program will see a large spread.”

Managing Volatility and Risk in Cryptocurrency

The spread of blockchain and cryptocurrencies to municipalities will expose local governments to the kind of volatility risk governments tend to avoid. Bowdre explains that the risk will be taken by third parties who guarantee a fiat price for the digital currencies they collect.

“They are compensated with a nominal, fair fee that they can charge on those payments, but it’s one-to-one to the county,” Bowdre said.

Blockchain Legislation

Miami is leading the way in government use of the blockchain, but Bowdre also helped form the US Crypto Policy Alliance, a group made up of Miami, Wyoming’s Cheyenne and 28 other state-level blockchain associations. The goal is to provide a way for regional blockchain associations to support each other legislatively, by creating legal templates that can be adapted to different locations.

Last year, Bowdre said, eleven pieces of blockchain-related legislation were submitted, and a panel is now advising the City of New York on blockchain municipal integration.

Applying blockchain technology to sewage systems and traffic lights may not be as dramatic as an imploding exchange and large-scale fraud, but behind the headlines, blockchain continues to spread.