#innisfil

If you live in Richmond Hill, you'll soon be able to pay your property taxes with Bitcoin.

Earlier this month the city passed a motion to give residents and businesses the option and it's now in the process of working out a deal with Coinberry, a digital currency platform.

"Coinberry, as a third party provider will be converting our residents' payments into Canadian dollars and giving that money to the city," said Joe Di Paola, deputy mayor of Richmond Hill.

The structure of the agreement means there "will be no cost and no risk to the city," he said.

Richmond Hill isn't the first municipality to accept cryptocurrency.

Innisfil’s journey with Uber began in 2015. Thickening traffic and an expanding population of seniors, students, and carless adults all signaled the need for some sort of shared mobility option in town. Just 45 minutes north of Toronto, the once-agricultural hamlet has recently ballooned in population, growing 17 percent from 2006 to 2016 to 37,000 residents.

But as local leaders studied options for a fixed-route bus service, the cost/benefit analysis didn’t seem to add up. One bus to serve a projected 17,000 annual riders would cost $270,000 in Canadian dollars for the first year of service, or about $16 per passenger. And designing the system would be a drawn-out process.

So instead, Innisfil did as so many people do when they’re in a hurry and facing a cumbersome bus ride: It hailed an Uber instead.

It really can’t be overstated how embarrassing it is that Innisfil’s mayor is boasting about this mess, which has now implemented a cap on the number of rides people can take per month. I can’t find evidence of any other public transit system in North America that places limitations like this on their users.

The Ontario town of Innisfil will soon begin accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for its property taxes, starting with Bitcoin.

The town of 36,000 people is north of Toronto and south of Barrie, Ont.

Its council voted late Tuesday in favour of the one-year cryptocurrency pilot project, in partnership with a Toronto company.

Starting in April, Innisfil residents will be able to pay taxes with Bitcoin through a digital wallet operated by Coinberry Pay, which will convert the crypto currency to Canadian funds and transfer the payment to the town.

Mayor Lynn Dollin says Innisfil is signalling to the world that it's an innovative community that's ready for the future.

Innisfil also provides a tax-subsidized Uber ride-hailing service as an alternative to conventional public transit.

Other forms of cryptocurrency may follow, such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple.

The town's experiment is being launched amid controversy about the risks of using cryptocurrency which, unlike conventional currency, isn't backed by any government or central bank.

Both of these stunts - the embrace of cryptocurrency and the subsidizing of Uber rides - are genuinely embarrassing examples of political posturing.