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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny that they said the quiet part out loud:

> As investors buy the coin, its value will ideally continue to go up, and that cash will be used to fund infrastructure projects or events in the city.

Like most new crypto projects, they plan to make money by manufacturing a token out of thin air and selling it to people in exchange for real, valuable money.

They will then use the real money to fund their infrastructure projects because their contractors are too smart to accept MIAMICOIN in exchange for goods and services.

I had to double-check to make sure I wasn’t reading a satire article.

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It’s like buying a municipal bond with no interest payments and infinite expiration date.

One could argue that these have an advantage, since technically, there is no counter-party risk!

This is no different from Miami printing dollars no? How is this legal?

This is no different from Miami selling numbered prints of an artwork. How is it not legal?

An artwork? Well, maybe.

Which begs an interesting question: could a city selling of numbered prints of artwork ever be an "investment contract" under Howey[1]? I think perhaps yes.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co.

> This is no different from Miami printing dollars no? How is this legal?

Is there a prohibition on states printing money?

Literally Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution.

  No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

> make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts

Since the dollar is not pegged to a gold or silver standard, I'd say the ship of this section has already sailed.

These are limits on the states, not the federal government [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_Tender_Cases

I suppose since we use paper bills, and debit cards, most states are violating the “make any Thing but gold and silver…” bit.

Pretty sure the only bits in that doc taken seriously are the lack of rules against meddling in elections, and leveraging 1A and 2A to rile the masses.

Paper bills are issued by the Federal Reserve Banks, not the states. Debit cards aren't "Tender in Payment of Debts" at all: creditors don't have to accept payment by debit card.

Creditors CAN accept them because states do not disallow it.

The point is taking the language in that document literally is a ridiculous exercise.

The men that wrote it had barely discovered electricity.

We romanticize the achievements of morons.

> Creditors CAN accept them because states do not disallow it.

The document says the states cannot force creditors to accept payment by card, and they don't.

I'm not trying to romanticize the constitution, and I agree that parts of it are pretty moronic. I don't really have an opinion about this section either way, but my point is that it is in force as it stands, literally.

Miami isn’t a State. ;)

It’s different because you can’t actually use MIAMICOIN to conduct transactions. If they suddenly decided that, I dunno, sales tax could be paid in MIAMICOIN, I have a feeling the federal government would quickly become interested.

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