New York Mayor-Elect Eric Adams recently won the mayoral race for the city. On November 3rd, Adams became the second black man to be elected as mayor in the city of New York. The win was momentous in itself but Adams’s comments and stance on cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, in particular, have been what has pushed him into the limelight in recent days.

The mayor-elect had made the news days after his election when he said that he planned to receive his first three paychecks in bitcoin. This was in response to Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez’s comment that he was going to receive a paycheck in bitcoin.

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Adams has always been open with residents about his plans for the city when it comes to crypto. According to the mayor, he was working towards making New York the crypto hub of the nation, and now, the mayor-elect has revealed another approach to helping residents become more literate when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Teaching Cryptocurrencies In Schools

Mayor-elect Adams was on CNN’s “State of the Union” to talk about his plans for the future. Adams is yet to be sworn into office and it’s likely that this will take place in 2022. However, this has not stopped the mayor from taking action on policy changes.

The mayor told CNN that he was usually stopped by young people who asked him what bitcoin and blockchain technology was. Adams saw this as a problem bred out of a lack of education and put forward that it was time that schools started teaching about cryptocurrencies in schools. “That’s what we must do, open our schools to teach the technology and teach this new way of thinking.”

Teaching cryptocurrencies in schools is not a novel idea. A number of high schools and colleges have added cryptocurrency classes into their curriculums to help educate the young generation about the space and the technology behind it. Although what the crypto-friendly mayor Adams is proposing is on a much wider scale. Basically that cryptocurrencies should be taught in all schools.

Crypto market cap surges past $2.8 trillion | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on TradingView.com

Putting New York At The Forefront

One of Adams’s goals for the city going forward is to make it a strong contender for Miami, which is currently one of the most crypto-friendly states in the nation. Mayor Suarez has successfully attracted a number of miners and blockchain businesses to the city through crypto-friendly laws and Mayor Adams wants to do the same. For Adams, cryptocurrencies are the future and New York needs to get on the train.

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The Democrat also talked to CNN about the possibility of accepting bitcoin payments in the city. Although the mayor-elect did not definitively say that the city would begin implementing crypto payments, he explained that the option would be explored. “We are going to look at it, and we are going to tread carefully. We are going to get it right,” said Adams.

Featured image from New York Post, chart from TradingView.com

Dogecoin, Lost and Found

Richard Lenz, a 31-year-old project manager for a hazardous waste removal company in North Ridgeville, Ohio, bought his Dogecoin in March 2014, after a subreddit for NASCAR fans banded together to sponsor the driver Josh Wise using cryptocurrency. (Mr. Wise ended up racing in a Doge-wrapped car.)

“Within a year I was done,” he said. “This was like, literally, just a joke.”

Then, a couple months ago, Mr. Lenz started seeing headlines about Dogecoin’s price surging. He also started getting nervous: He knew he’d stored his coins on his old computer’s hard drive, but he wasn’t sure where that drive was.

“I started looking for it a month, two months ago, and couldn’t find it,” he said. Somewhere, he had $10,000 worth of Dogecoin, then $40,000. “My father was kind of upset,” he said, a feeling that intensified as the price climbed.

Mr. Lenz resigned himself to the fact that his coins were gone. “If God wanted me to have the money, I would have had the money,” he said. Then, on May 7, the day before Elon Musk was slated to host “Saturday Night Live,” he found the drive and sold his coins immediately, for around $70,000. (After “S.N.L.,” where Mr. Musk joked about the currency, the price tumbled.)

Mr. Lenz gave a chunk of the money to his parents and plans to help pay for his sister’s wedding. As for the rest? “I am not kidding you when I say I YOLOed it,” he said, on shares of the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s SPAC, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings.