Diego Fernandez, the city of Buenos Aires’ secretary for innovation and digital transformation, said during the ETH LATAM event that the Argentine capital intends to add Ethereum validation nodes in 2023.
According to Fernandez, the initiative “has exploratory and regulatory aims” and would assist the 3 million-person city in “developing adaptive policy” for cryptocurrencies. This was said in an interview with the media site CoinDesk.
Buenos Aires would very likely be the first city in the whole globe where a government sets up an Ethereum node, or a computer running Ethereum client software.
According to Fernandez, the nodes will be deployed under a regulatory sandbox that was authorized by the Buenos Aires legislature in 2021. The Buenos Aires administration will also solicit assistance from private citizens for the node deployment through the sandbox.
The city of Buenos Aires will accept cryptocurrency payments for tax obligations.
Horacio Rodriguez Larreta – MAYOR of Buenos Aires
He did not specify how many nodes the city would set up, but he did state that they would be kept in “world-class” data centers that belonged to the city of Buenos Aires.
Digital identity
It’s important to note that Buenos Aires has already experimented with cryptocurrencies. To give city citizens control over their personal data, the city started working on TangoID, a Blockchain-based digital identification platform, in March. He further said that the platform will be functioning by January 2023. Fernandez said in his presentation from yesterday that TangoID would first be anchored on Starknet.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop the Digital Identity for Inclusion Project based on Blockchain was also announced much earlier in 2019, by the Innovation Lab of the Inter-American Development Bank, NEC Argentina, and the Civil Association DECODES (NGO Bitcoin Argentina). This project “aims to improve access to quality goods and services for the inhabitants of Buenos Aires through a portable, secure, transparent, and self-sovereign digital identity,” according to the MoU.
Mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta of Buenos Aires also said in April that the city will accept cryptocurrency payments for tax obligations. At the time, Larreta said that the government would instead collect Argentine pesos via conversions carried out by bitcoin businesses rather than cryptocurrencies directly from citizens.
Imagen: Pablo, Pixabay.
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