New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants you to pay your taxes in crypto.
The mayor said Tuesday he would create a “digital assets advisory council” that will help the city attract investment and jobs in fintech and integrate blockchain technology into city services.
Adams insisted the announcement wasn’t about “chasing memes or trends.” Instead, it was about “making crypto and blockchain part of the New York City landscape.”
“Bringing blockchain security capabilities to the city means that birth certificates and death records could remain private, but accessible to New Yorkers and their next of kins,” he told a group of financiers, crypto developers, and reporters assembled at the mayor’s official residence Tuesday.
Adams didn’t specify what sort of technology would allow that, but zero knowledge proofs are frequently cited as a tool that would enable private activity on otherwise public blockchains, while allowing users to reveal select information at the request of regulators or law enforcement.
“We are exploring whether certain city services, the city taxes, could be paid via cryptocurrency,” he added.
The city will announce the chair of the council in a few weeks, along with “key policy recommendations [that] will help ensure that we use this technology the right way,” Adams said.
Adams is one of several mayors in the United States who has cast himself as a crypto champion. Before taking office, he pledged to take his first three paychecks in crypto. When federal regulations prevented him from doing so, he used the money from his first paycheck to purchase Bitcoin and Ether.
“When I did it, they all laughed at me. The reporters mocked me,” he said.
“And I keep telling them over and over again, ‘Who’s laughing now?’ My investment has paid off.”
Adams’ tenure has been controversial. In 2024, prosecutors charged Adams with accepting bribes from Turkish officials in exchange for greasing the approval of a new Turkish consular building in the city. Adams denied the charge and said the allegations were politically motivated.
He faced a fresh round of scrutiny early this year when several prosecutors in the Southern District of New York resigned, citing pressure from officials in the Trump administration to drop the charges.
In her resignation letter, interim US Attorney Danielle Sassoon — the lead prosecutor in the government’s case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried — suggested administration officials had used the charges as leverage to extract from Adams cooperation in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
On Tuesday, it was clear Adams saw crypto entrepreneurs as fellow victims in political persecution.
“You were harassed, you were demonized, you were treated as though you were the enemy instead of the believers,” he said, an apparent reference to regulators’ crackdown on crypto companies in the wake of FTX’s 2022 collapse.
“But you withstood. Your resiliency is admirable, and it will all pay off, because everyone is going to come around and understand these are different days and different times.”
Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at [email protected].
