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City token · post-mortem · what to do instead

MiamiCoin: what actually happened

For about a year, MiamiCoin was the most talked-about civic experiment in crypto. It sent the City of Miami roughly $5.2 million, then lost effectively all of its value and was delisted from its main exchange. This is the honest post-mortem — and the answer to what people are really searching for.

  • Full timeline
  • Why it failed
  • What to buy instead

Read the timeline

Updated 5 August 2026 7 min read By the Crypto Miami research desk Timeline assembled from contemporaneous reporting and exchange notices. Not investment advice.

The short answer

MiamiCoin (MIA) is effectively dead. OKCoin, its main trading venue, suspended MIA and NYCCoin on 16 March 2023 citing exceptionally low liquidity, with MIA trading around $0.00035. The City of Miami received roughly $5.2 million from the project. It was never an official city cryptocurrency — it was a third-party CityCoins token built on Stacks. If you are looking for a way into crypto in Miami, start with liquid major assets instead.

$5.2M

earned by the City of Miami from MiamiCoin, per February 2022 reporting

$0.00035

MIA price around the time of its trading suspension

16 Mar 2023

OKCoin suspended MIA and NYCCoin trading for low liquidity

0

official cryptocurrencies issued by the City of Miami

What MiamiCoin actually was

The most important correction first, because a very large share of the confusion around this token comes from one misunderstanding: MiamiCoin was not issued by the City of Miami. There has never been an official City of Miami cryptocurrency.

MiamiCoin, ticker MIA, was a token created by CityCoins — a project powered by the tokenomics startup behind Stacks, a protocol that enables smart contracts anchored to Bitcoin. The design was that participants could mine the token by committing STX, or stack it to earn yield, and that a proportion of the mining proceeds would be directed to a wallet the city could claim.

The city's role was therefore to be a recipient, not an issuer. It agreed to accept proceeds and, in the person of its then-mayor, to talk about it enthusiastically. That distinction matters enormously for how you should read the whole episode: no municipal balance sheet, no municipal obligation, no municipal guarantee. A private project with a civic beneficiary and a civic endorsement.

The pitch was genuinely interesting. If cities could fund themselves partly through tokenised civic enthusiasm rather than only through taxation, that would be a real innovation. Miami plausibly agreed to test it. The test produced an answer.

The timeline

July 2021

MiamiCoin launches

CityCoins rolls out MIA with the stated intention of funding city initiatives. Miami’s leadership promotes it publicly and it attracts substantial national media attention as the first serious municipal experiment of its kind in the United States.

Late 2021

The peak

The token trades actively during the broader crypto bull market and generates real proceeds. This is the period in which almost every enthusiastic article about MiamiCoin was written, which is why searching for it today still surfaces optimistic coverage.

February 2022

Miami reports about $5.2M earned

Reporting puts the City of Miami’s earnings from the token at roughly $5.2 million. Real money, genuinely received. It came from token buyers rather than from any productive activity — a distinction that becomes the whole story.

May 2022

The collapse

As the wider market turns, MIA falls dramatically. Coverage at the time framed it as the crypto downturn arriving for MiamiCoin specifically, and the token never recovers. Trading volume thins to the point where price becomes close to meaningless.

16 March 2023

Delisted from its main venue

OKCoin suspends trading of MiamiCoin (MIA) and NYCCoin (NYC), citing exceptionally low liquidity. MIA had been trading around $0.00035. With its principal exchange gone, the token becomes effectively untradeable for ordinary holders.

Since

A cautionary reference point

MiamiCoin now functions mainly as a case study, cited whenever a new city or institution proposes a token. That is a genuinely useful legacy, if not the intended one.

$5.2M in, ~$0 out

The city received millions. Holders were left with a token worth a fraction of a cent that its main exchange would no longer list. Both of those things are true at once, and holding them together is the only honest way to describe what happened here.

City proceeds versus residual token value

Why it failed

Not because of fraud, and not because of the market downturn alone. The downturn was the trigger; the design was the cause.

Nothing generated demand except belief. The token did not entitle you to anything. It was not required to pay for a city service, not needed to access anything, not redeemable, not a claim on revenue. The only reason to buy MIA was the expectation that someone else would buy it later at a higher price. That works while the market is rising and stops instantly when it is not.

Liquidity was concentrated in one venue. When OKCoin suspended trading, ordinary holders had essentially nowhere to go. A token whose tradability depends on a single exchange's willingness to keep a market open has a single point of failure that has nothing to do with the token itself.

Civic endorsement was mistaken for civic obligation. A great many buyers appear to have believed that because a mayor promoted it and a city received proceeds, someone would support the price. Nobody had undertaken to do so, and nobody did. Endorsement is not a backstop.

The incentive structure ran one way. Proceeds flowed from buyers to the city. There was no mechanism through which value flowed back to holders. That is a donation with a speculative wrapper, and describing it plainly is not hindsight — the mechanism was public from the start.

On “MiamiCoin price prediction”

A great deal of search traffic still asks for a MiamiCoin price or a price prediction, so it deserves a direct answer rather than an evasion.

There is no meaningful price. Price requires a market, a market requires liquidity, and liquidity is precisely what OKCoin cited when it suspended trading in March 2023. Whatever number a data aggregator displays for MIA is derived from negligible volume and should not be treated as a value you could realise on any size.

Anyone publishing a MiamiCoin price prediction today is producing content for search traffic rather than analysis, and we are not going to join them. What we will say is that the honest prediction for any delisted, non-utility token is that it stays where it is until people stop looking for it.

Illustration of cryptocurrency icons, locks and digital infrastructure
MiamiCoin had media attention, political endorsement and a real city receiving proceeds. None of those are demand.

What people looking for MiamiCoin are really looking for

Reading the queries that bring people to this page, most are not really asking about a delisted token. They are asking one of three questions, and each has a better answer.

What you were looking forThe better answer
A way to get exposure to Miami’s growthA city is not an investable asset, but Miami property is — and it is the single largest crypto-settled market in the country. See buying Miami real estate with crypto.
A cheap token that might go up a lotThe honest framing: you are looking for high-variance speculation. Do it with money you can lose entirely, on liquid assets, on a licensed venue where you can actually exit. Start with the exchange ranking.
Something local and crypto-related to participate inMiami’s genuine crypto economy is in businesses, not tokens — merchant acceptance, property settlement, professional services and the OTC layer. See paying with crypto in Miami.
How the city actually engages with crypto nowThrough regulation rather than issuance. Florida passed the first state-level stablecoin framework in 2026 and has filed legislation for a state cryptocurrency reserve. See Florida crypto regulation.
A first purchase, and MiamiCoin was just the search you triedThen this is the page you want: how to buy bitcoin in Miami, step by step, with the funding method that costs nothing instead of 4%.

Inter Miami and fan tokens

A related search that lands here often enough to address: whether there is an Inter Miami crypto token, and whether it is worth holding.

Football clubs around the world have issued fan tokens through third-party platforms. The honest description of these products is that they are marketing and engagement instruments, not investments. They typically confer voting rights on peripheral club decisions — a bus livery, a warm-up playlist — plus access to promotions and experiences. The club receives a fee; the platform builds a user base.

Two things to hold onto if you are considering one. The token's price has essentially no relationship to the club's sporting or financial performance, so buying it as a bet on the team is a category error. And any club token should be verified through the club's own official channels before you buy, because a well-known team name is exactly the sort of thing a fraudulent token borrows.

If you genuinely want the fan experience, buy the fan token with the amount you would spend on merchandise and expect the same return. If you want an investment, that is a different page.

The bottom line

A real experiment that produced a real answer

MiamiCoin deserves neither the boosterism it got in 2021 nor pure derision now. It was a genuine attempt to test whether civic enthusiasm could be monetised into municipal revenue, it was run in public, and the City of Miami received roughly $5.2 million from it. The experiment succeeded in generating money and failed completely in generating sustained value for the people who provided it.

The transferable lesson is worth more than the token ever was: endorsement is not demand, and a single exchange is not a market. Apply both tests to whatever the next city, club or brand token turns out to be — and if you are here because you want to start in crypto, begin with liquid assets on a licensed venue instead.

MiamiCoin questions

Can you still buy MiamiCoin?
Not meaningfully. OKCoin, which was the main exchange offering MiamiCoin (MIA), suspended trading of MIA and NYCCoin on 16 March 2023, citing exceptionally low liquidity. At the time of that reporting MIA was trading around $0.00035, having lost effectively all of its value. Anyone offering to sell you MiamiCoin today should be treated with extreme caution.
What was MiamiCoin?
MiamiCoin (ticker MIA) was a token created by the CityCoins project, built on the Stacks protocol, which enables smart contracts anchored to Bitcoin. It launched in 2021 with the idea that people could mine or hold the token, and that a share of the proceeds would flow to the City of Miami. It was never issued by the city itself.
How much money did Miami actually make from MiamiCoin?
Reporting in February 2022 put the figure at roughly $5.2 million earned by the City of Miami from the token. That was real money that reached the city. What is important to understand is that it came from token buyers rather than from any revenue-generating activity, and those buyers were left holding an asset that subsequently collapsed.
Is there an official City of Miami cryptocurrency?
No. There is no official cryptocurrency issued by the City of Miami. MiamiCoin was a third-party project that the city agreed to receive proceeds from, which is a very different arrangement from a municipal issuance. Anyone marketing a new "official Miami coin" should be verified directly with the city before you send money.
Is there an Inter Miami crypto token?
Football clubs across the world have issued fan tokens through third-party platforms, and these are marketing and engagement products rather than investments. They typically confer voting rights on trivial club decisions and access to promotions. Verify any club token directly through the club’s official channels, and treat the price as unrelated to the club’s performance.
What is the lesson from MiamiCoin?
That a token with civic branding and political endorsement is still just a token, and that endorsement is not a business model. MiamiCoin had genuine institutional attention, real media coverage and an actual city receiving proceeds — and none of that produced sustained demand, because nothing about holding the token generated value. If you cannot explain who buys it next and why, you are the demand.