Rio de Janeiro — one of Brazil's biggest cities — will accept Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) for real estate taxes starting in next year, according to a local official.
What Happened: Chicão Bulhões — Rio de Janeiro's Secretary of Economic Development, Innovation and Simplification — announced the upcoming implementation of the pro-crypto tax laws on Friday through the publication of a post on an official government website.
The new law allows the "Imposto sobre a propriedade predial e territorial urbana" tax on urban real estate within the city's limits to be paid in Bitcoin.
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Changpeng Zhao — the CEO of the world's largest crypto exchange Binance — recently announced that the firm would open an office in Rio de Janeiro after his meeting with the city's mayor Eduardo Paes. Bulhões welcomed the businessman and the company to Rio de Janeiro, and Zhao concluded that the mayor has "done his part. We are working on ours."
The move is likely the start of a partnership between Rio de Janeiro and Binance, considering that the announcement notes that "to enable the operation, the municipality will hire companies specialized in converting crypto assets into reais. In this way, the City Hall will receive 100% of the amount in the currency."
The city's secretary Pedro Paulo explained that Rio de Janeiro plans to integrate cryptocurrencies much further into the local economy and that this is just the start.
He promised that local authorities "will stimulate the circulation of cryptocurrencies by integrating them into the payment of taxes, as in the case of IPTU and, in the future, this can be expanded to services such as taxi races, for example."
Furthermore, Rio de Janeiro also has plans to implement non-fungible token-based (NFT) governance policies in markets such as art, culture and tourism.
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