The City of Rio de Janeiro authorized the accreditation of companies that will use cryptocurrencies to carry out IPTU 2023 payment operations. According to the municipal administration, Rio becomes the first city in Brazil to offer taxpayers this means of paying a tax, that will not be limited to just one digital currency. The decree, published on the 11.10th in the Official Gazette of the Municipality, indicates that the city hall will hire companies specialized in carrying out the conversion of crypto assets into reais. With the measure, the municipality will receive 100% of the value in local currency, at no additional cost to the capital. Why did Rio de Janeiro adopt this practice? First of all, it is worth mentioning that it was an excellent attitude by the city of RJ, which had Miami as a reference, which decided to pay attention to this sector of the economy that tends to grow a lot in the coming years. Rio is a beach town, and it was on a surfers beach that the first community project with a Bitcoin-based economy, Bitcoin Beach, in El Salvador, was created. Latin America, in general, has given positive signals to cryptocurrencies. Therefore, already having this reference and understanding that the crypto market has been growing more and more, Rio understood that this alternative should arrive at some point. Other cities, inevitably, must follow suit. Creating new coins and tokens goes a long way. The sum of new blockchain technologies and the increase in cyber security – which allows anyone to create reliable and hack-free money – will give a lot of chance for the advancement of the alternative economy and greatly improve the economic situation of the entire planet. . That’s why the invention of Bitcoin and technologies derived from it have been getting so much attention in the last 10 years and it’s really something with strong global potential. Something fantastic. As markets become more and more dynamic, largely due to technological advances, it is possible to sell a multitude of things over the internet, such as software, photos, projects and services of various natures, classes, courses and intimate content, all without matter where people are. It doesn’t matter if one is in Indonesia and the other is in Nigeria or Turkey. If the person wants to buy your product, they managed to get in touch with you and this product can be sold over the internet, the product or service will be delivered and payment will be made in the currency that is most efficient to settle the transaction. What does this change in the general population? A whole concept of work that we have these days. Many people already work on the internet, trying to be more informal, have flexibility and, consequently, better quality of life. And this new way of working is growing. The most prevalent desire in our society today is to no longer have to work. More than having a lot of money. And the closest thing to that is being able to work from home, without having to go through selective processes – often embarrassing – and having the sovereignty of their own hours and dress code. Therefore, it is on the internet that people, especially younger ones, who are entering the job market now and already projecting a future, must choose and qualify for the new modalities of work leveraged by the world wide web and its new technologies. Cryptocurrencies are the grease of this new gear, that is, a fluid that allows the method to happen naturally. For example, I sell software over the internet, the person pays me over the internet, on the internet everything happens and is resolved. It is fast, practical, safe and without bureaucracy. People just need to lose their fear and acquire certain skills to carry out these transactions over the internet, as happened with e-commerce and the use of online credit cards. Getting used to the self-management that domestic work requires is also a key factor in participating in this new world. It is this kind of influence that the adoption and acceptance of governments and municipalities is expected to bring to the populations of Rio and other crypto-friendly cities. *Fabiano Dias is Director of International Business at Bitwage, one of the pioneers and leader of the cryptocurrency industry. He has been working with cryptocurrencies since 2015 and has been a speaker and participant in the main events around the Globe, with Bitconf BR, Labitconf, Decentralizar, Bitcoin & Blockchain Prague and Viva Tech Paris.
Warning: The text presented in this column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of CriptoFácil. Also read: PicPay releases new tokens for trading: Uniswap (UNI) and Chainlink (LINK) Also read: Solana’s TVL drops 7.98% after the FTX crisis Read also: SBF prepares document in which it will tell everything that happened at FTX, says newspaper
Why did RJ decide to receive IPTU through cryptocurrencies? What is the trend in other regions?
