Mayor Adams is heading on a taxpayer-funded trip to Puerto Rico this week to speak at a cryptocurrency conference.
Kayla Mamelak, Adams’ spokeswoman, told the Daily News that the city is paying the mayor’s airfare and lodging as he left New York on Tuesday to attend the “Puerto Rico Blockchain Week” confab in San Juan.
Mamela said Adams was set to deliver remarks at the event Tuesday afternoon alongside other cryptocurrency enthusiasts, including billionaire Brock Pierce and Perianne Boring, a businesswoman currently under consideration by President-elect Donald Trump to become his chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal entity that regulates the crypto industry.
Sources said there were conversations about Adams potentially meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago as part of his itinerary, but Mamelak said that wasn’t the case and that the mayor’s expected to return to New York on Wednesday. Adams has said he hopes to meet with Trump before the president-elect’s inauguration to discuss issues of importance to New York, including immigration. Adams has also said he wants to be “working” not “warring” with the Trump administration.
In Puerto Rico, Adams was expected to stay over Tuesday night in a San Juan hotel, according to Mamelak, who said the city’s paying for the trip because the mayor’s going to learn “more about innovative ways to bring tech jobs to New York City.” Mamelak said Adams is flying commercial to Puerto Rico and that city funds will be used to cover all “parts of the trip that have a city purpose.” She didn’t say how much the trip is expected to cost.
The mayor’s also carving out time to do some campaign fundraising.
Pierce, a crypto tycoon and campaign donor to Adams, was set to host a fundraiser for the mayor’s reelection in San Juan Tuesday night, according to an online invitation first reported by Politico. The invitation urges supporters to give Adams $3,700 each — a figure that exceeds the max $2,100 donors can contribute to a campaign participating in the city’s public matching funds program.
Adams’ crypto-focused trip comes as Trump’s incoming administration has vowed to focus more federal resources on boosting cryptocurrencies amid concerns about fraud in the industry and its environmental impacts. In anticipation of Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, the value of cryptocurrencies have surged.
Adams has long himself been a major crypto proponent, converting his first three mayoral paychecks into Bitcoin. Last week, Adams boasted that the value of his crypto holdings have surged since Trump’s election.
“Remember y’all laughed at me when I first got my Bitcoin. Who’s laughing now? Go look at my Bitcoin now … Now you wish you would have done it,” he told reporters.
At the crypto conference, Adams was expected to rub shoulders with several Trump acolytes, including Pierce, a friend to the mayor who’s also close with several Trump advisers, including Steve Bannon.
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