Mayor Ken Sim continues to make his rounds as an advocate for bitcoin and is scheduled to be a featured speaker at a two-day conference this weekend at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
The event organizer’s website says Sim will speak Sunday in a 30-minute evening slot titled “Bitcoin and the City of Vancouver.” The “fireside chat” will be hosted by Scott Dedels, the co-CEO of Block Rewards and host of The Block Reward Podcast.
The “learning bitcoin” conference is billed as an event for “the curious, for the sovereign, for the next wave of bitcoiners.” General admission tickets are $150 each and can be purchased with bitcoin.
“Learning bitcoin is the ultimate education conference designed to empower you – whether you're an individual, family, or business – with the knowledge and skills to navigate bitcoin with confidence!” the website said.
It will not be the first time Sim speaks to an audience of people interested in bitcoin, as BIV reported in April after the mayor was the keynote speaker at the Virgo Crypto Summit at the Sheraton Wall Centre.
The mayor’s participation in such conferences and being a guest on various podcasts stems from a motion he successfully presented to city council in December 2024.
His motion directed staff to explore options to make Vancouver a bitcoin-friendly city by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the potential to integrate bitcoin into the City of Vancouver's financial strategies.
That would include, but not be limited to, accepting taxes and fees in bitcoin.
The mayor has also called for the potential conversion of a portion of the city’s financial reserves into bitcoin “to preserve purchasing power and guard against the volatility, debasement and inflationary pressures of traditional currencies.”
The mayor described bitcoin in his motion as a decentralized, digital currency “impervious to the ups and downs of centralized monetary systems.”
He said it has been recognized by financial experts and analysts as a potential hedge against inflation and currency debasement and represents a viable store of value due to its capped supply and growing adoption in the global economy.
'Hill that I'm willing to die on'
At the Virgo Crypto Summit, he announced to the crowd that his push to explore bitcoin “is a hill that I'm willing to die on because it's the right thing to do.” A staff report was expected to go before city council before the end of March, but never happened.
As of this week, it was still unclear whether such a report will be released, although the mayor’s office said in an email that “staff are continuing to explore this work in line with council’s direction, and there’s no confirmed date for the report to return to council.”
At the Virgo Crypto Summit, the mayor said that no matter what staff recommends in the report that he will ensure more work will be done on crypto.
“If they miss the mark, if they come up with recommendations that are factually incorrect or based on the wrong data, I will be personally filing an amendment to correct those discrepancies, and then we'll vote on that as well, and then it will pass,” he told the crowd.
That promise nor any mention of bitcoin was included this week in the email from his office.
“My focus is on clear priorities and real results in the areas that matter most to Vancouverites: making our city safer, building more housing faster, and making life more affordable,” he said. “That’s how we’re building a stronger, better Vancouver for everyone who calls this city home.”
'A matter of life and death'
OneCity Coun. Lucy Maloney described the mayor’s continued interest in bitcoin as a misplaced priority, particularly when many Vancouverites are struggling to make ends meet in what has become an expensive city.
“The hill I die on is a safer, more affordable, more livable city for every one of our neighbours,” said Maloney, noting the provincial government has already stated it’s not interested in Sim’s bitcoin pursuit.
“We've got such serious problems that are a matter of life and death for the residents of Vancouver. It would be nice to see him putting this energy into addressing the homelessness crisis, the poison drug epidemic, the people that die on our roads. There are bigger issues that I wish he was putting his passion into.”
Maloney was elected in the byelection that occurred the day after the mayor’s speech at Virgo Crypto Summit. Coun. Sean Orr of COPE was also elected, with candidates for the mayor’s ABC Vancouver party finishing sixth and seventh.
Maloney said people she spoke to at doorsteps during the campaign were suspicious of bitcoin and its potential use at the City of Vancouver.
“I think I spoke to fewer than five people out of all the people I spoke to during the byelection campaign who thought that investing in bitcoin was a good idea,” said Maloney, noting she knocked on hundreds, if not thousands of doors.
El Salvador
Green Party Coun. Pete Fry is equally concerned about what he described as the mayor’s “personal kind of passion project.” Fry said Sim is spending too much time on a venture that is not legally permissible via the Vancouver Charter or the province’s Community Charter.
“For us to invest in bitcoin as a city, it does seem incredibly reckless,” said Fry, noting Sim’s motion in December referenced El Salvador’s investment in bitcoin. “They had invested heavily in bitcoin for their national currency, and since had to get bailed out by the International Monetary Fund because of such a colossal failure.”
Council’s focus, he said, needs to be on providing affordable housing for people and lifting residents out of poverty, particularly in the Downtown Eastside, where people living with a mental illness, an addiction, or both, are struggling to survive.
In a previous interview, Sim said that his interest in bitcoin is focused on protecting the purchasing power of the City of Vancouver for the long term and sees it as a way to avoid huge property tax increases and cutting services.
“It's a technology that has been around for over 16 years,” Sim said. “It is becoming mainstream. Nation states, ETFs, pension funds, family offices, investment advisors—they're all starting to add it to portfolios. I would love to see Vancouver set up for the next 100 years. That's my opinion.”
This weekend’s conference also features a segment titled, “heating Kitsilano pool with bitcoin mining.”
Sim has shown interest in the topic, with him recently posing in a photograph posted via the X social media platform with staff at Mintgreen, a Canadian cleantech company specializing in heat recovery from bitcoin mining.
X/@Howellings
