Eric Adams converted his first mayoral paycheck into bitcoin and ether

New York City Mayor Eric Adams had his first mayoral paycheck converted into bitcoin and ether through Coinbase on January 21, 2022, fulfilling a public promise intended to present the city as receptive to cryptocurrency businesses.

The development mattered less for the undisclosed amount purchased than for the office attached to it. Adams had taken charge of the largest U.S. city and one of the world’s most important financial centers on January 1. His decision gave the cryptocurrency industry a conspicuous endorsement from a sitting public official while New York remained one of the country’s most closely regulated digital-asset markets.

The available record supports a narrower description than saying New York City paid its mayor in cryptocurrency. The city issued an ordinary dollar-denominated paycheck. Coinbase then converted the funds into bitcoin and ether before they became available to Adams.

A conversion, not municipal crypto payroll

The mayor’s office announced the arrangement on January 20 and specified that the first paycheck would arrive on January 21. It said New York City could not pay employees directly in cryptocurrency because of applicable U.S. Department of Labor regulations. The exchange conversion served as a workaround available to someone whose compensation was initially paid in dollars.

That distinction separated Adams’s personal asset allocation from city fiscal policy. New York did not adopt bitcoin or ether as legal tender, place cryptocurrency on its balance sheet, change employee compensation rules or require another worker to use Coinbase. No municipal funds were committed to the purchase beyond Adams’s salary after it was paid to him.

Adams presented the decision as part of an effort to attract jobs, investment and technical talent. That was a contemporaneous political claim, not a demonstrated economic result. The conversion itself did not establish that cryptocurrency companies would relocate to New York, that employment would increase or that digital assets would expand access to financial services.

The market supplied an immediate volatility warning

The purchase coincided with a severe cryptocurrency selloff. Coinbase’s BTC-USD candle for the 24-hour UTC window beginning January 21 opened at $40,671.77 and closed at $36,456.94, a decline of approximately 10.36% calculated by Coinburn. Its intraday low was $35,422.

Coinbase’s ETH-USD candle for the same window opened at $3,000.99 and closed at $2,569.01, a calculated decline of approximately 14.39%, with a low of $2,467.11.

Those figures describe trading on one exchange and do not establish Adams’s execution prices. Bitcoin and ether traded continuously across many venues, and the city did not disclose when Coinbase performed the conversions. Coinbase also warns that its historical candle data may be incomplete. No defensible return calculation can therefore be made for the mayor’s holdings from the daily candles.

The timing nevertheless illustrated the tension in Adams’s message. Cryptocurrency could function as a visible symbol of financial innovation, but converting wages into volatile assets exposed the recipient to price movements that ordinary dollar payroll did not impose.

What remained undisclosed

Neither the mayor’s office nor the contemporaneous reports reviewed by Coinburn disclosed the gross or net paycheck amount, the allocation between bitcoin and ether, Coinbase fees, execution times, exchange rates, wallet addresses or whether the assets were withdrawn from the platform. No public blockchain transaction can be reliably attributed to the conversion from the available evidence.

The records also do not show that Coinbase sponsored the transaction or that Adams received preferential terms. They establish that the exchange provided the conversion mechanism, not the commercial details surrounding it.

Later confirmation

In a June 26, 2025 city transcript, Adams described taking his first three paychecks in bitcoin as a deliberately symbolic message. That later statement corroborates the broader sequence but does not supply the missing January 21 transaction details or change what could be verified on the event date.