On March 27, Mayor Ken Sim privately admitted that his pitch for Vancouver to become a Bitcoin-friendly city is “not an election winner.”
The timing of the comment was auspicious. Sim had just left the stage at Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto event—the final Bitcoin-focused gathering the mayor attended ahead of the April 5 byelection. After submitting a headline-grabbing motion to council in December last year to explore how cryptocurrency could be introduced into the city’s business operations, the mayor spent weeks spotlighting the crypto-friendly nature of both ABC-party candidates for the byelection, Ralph Kaisers and Jamie Stein.
Sim’s confession about his Bitcoin policy eventually proved correct. Of the 13 contenders that ran in the byelection, Stein and Kaisers finished sixth and seventh, the lowest results of any party-boosted candidates.
“A hill worth dying on”
After the Stand With Crypto event has wrapped, Sim is seated at the end of the boardroom table at Dapper Labs, the Vancouver-based Web3 giant that built the technical foundation for NFTs and the much-hyped NBA Top Shot collectibles. Framed behind him are the evening lights from the False Creek Flats: an area which, fittingly, is being developed by the city to support creative and digital businesses. Adjusting the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt, the mayor leans forward.
“I’ll just call it what it is,” he said. “I just think, politically, it’s not an election winner. In fact, it actually hurts people [running].
“I’ll just call it what it is. Politically, it’s not an election winner. In fact, it actually hurts.”
“But I also believe that leading is hard, right?” he continued. “If it was easy, everyone would do it. This is one topic that we’re going to lead on. You don’t need strong leadership when everything’s simple. You need it when things are complicated and when there’s adversity. And so we are doing exactly that.”
Sim is a firm believer in the merits of Bitcoin to secure a financial future—both for the City of Vancouver and his personal pocketbook. In his 2024 disclosure, Sim revealed that he owns shares in Coinbase, a crypto exchange that deals with virtual currency (Sim didn’t respond to a request for comment on how much of a stake he owns in the company, and is not required to make that admission in the disclosure). He also holds Bitcoin, and has pledged to give $10,000 worth of his coins to the City of Vancouver if it approves adding cryptocurrency to the books. With his background as an entrepreneur and investment banker, Sim has experience in taking big swings on risky prospects, and is willing to bet on Bitcoin’s growing importance on the world stage.
The mayor’s pitch faces strong opposition. Sim is already contending with regulatory hurdles from the ruling provincial party, which went on record that “local governments in British Columbia aren’t able to hold financial reserves in cryptocurrency.” In addition, his December motion, which called for city staff to loosely research the viability of using Bitcoin for city services, failed to win a unanimous vote.
Then there’s the byelection results. The two successful council candidates at the municipal polls, COPE’s Sean Orr and OneCity’s Lucy Maloney, both ran their campaigns as a referendum on Ken Sim and his ABC-majority’s policies. The results are a public signal that the majority of Vancouverites are not as interested in using Bitcoin for city services as their mayor.
But while Sim styles himself as a laid-back lawmaker, he is no political slouch. Backing two byelection candidates with pro-Bitcoin platforms implies that he knew the risks of endorsing an unpopular policy, and did it anyway. Sim’s desire to push that agenda is telling.
As he put it in that Dapper Labs office, Bitcoin is “a hill worth dying on,” even at the risk of his political capital.
Bitcoin cities
On Dec. 11, 2024, Vancouver city council passed Sim’s initial motion to explore options to become a “Bitcoin-friendly city.”
The proposal was broad. City staff were to draw up an analysis of how the currency could be integrated into Vancouver’s existing financial strategies, including accepting taxes and fees in Bitcoin, and converting some of the city’s financial reserves into cryptocurrency. The report was due at the end of the first fiscal quarter—a deadline which has since come and gone, though Sim says he expects it to be delivered at some point in May.
“Either it’s going to be a great report and we’re going to vote on it, or the report is going to suck, and then we’re going to change it, and then we’re going to vote on it,” he said.
Vancouver is not the first jurisdiction to explore a use case for Bitcoin. The motion lists a number of high-profile locales which have already adopted the experimental currency. Zug, Switzerland, for instance—dubbed “Crypto Valley”—was one of the first municipalities to accept Bitcoin for public services and taxes. The city’s use of cryptocurrency continues to expand, with European supermarket giant Spar announcing in April that it will now accept payments in Bitcoin. Seoul, South Korea, has also embraced digital currencies, with local government initiatives exploring blockchain integration in municipal operations. Nearly half of the country’s workers aged 30 to 39 say they have invested in cryptocurrencies.
But crypto as an investment is not the same as crypto for payments, and not all municipal attempts to integrate Bitcoin into city operations have been successful. El Salvador was the first country to make it legal tender in 2021, primarily in the coastal town of El Zonte—also known as “Bitcoin Beach”—which encouraged widespread cryptocurrency use, supported by government wallets and tax incentives for blockchain-based businesses. That experiment lasted just four years. El Salvador reversed the decision in early 2025 as a condition of an International Monetary Fund loan, and surveys suggested no more than eight percent of Salvadorians used crypto even occasionally.
“I don’t think this is a step in the right direction.”
Pete Fry
City Councillor
The Vancouver proposal to explore Bitcoin options for the city has also faced direct political opposition. Adriane Carr—a Green Party veteran who resigned her four-term seat in January this year, in part due to a growing sense of frustration with Sim and the ABC majority—voted against the motion, citing environmental questions.
“There’s a lot of concern around the use of electricity,” she said. “For example, our hydroelectric grid. We’ve had conversations in this council chamber about the worry [over] the supply of electricity in order to tackle our biggest problem, which is making sure that our housing and buildings can shift from fossil fuels to electricity.”
Pete Fry, also with the Green Party, highlighted how the city council had previously heard from Vancouver police that criminal organizations are using Bitcoin for money laundering.
“In the absence of any really specific acknowledgement of … the very serious issues around money laundering and the history in this city, I don’t think this is a step in the right direction,” he told city council.
“If we passed a motion like that on any other topic, we wouldn’t even talk about it,” Sim said, reflecting back on the opposition to the city staff researching the issue further. “But because it was related to Bitcoin and crypto, all of a sudden everyone’s back went up, and it was hard to get that motion passed.”
Creative uses
Key to the mayor’s argument is that Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation. Though the currency is volatile and has routinely swung corrections greater than 50 percent, its variability was spun at the hearing by Bitcoin investor and motion supporter Curtis Hynan as less risky than the slow drop in the value of the Canadian dollar, which has softened against the US equivalent by 1.6 percent in the past year. The price of Bitcoin, by contrast, has historically trended up.
Sim’s motion points out that Bitcoin has been the best-performing financial asset over the past decade, and that major institutions and investors have added it to their books, implying that they see the cryptocurrency as either a good short-term bet or a legitimate long-term store of value. The financially irresponsible position, Sim’s motion says, is for the city not to consider investing in Bitcoin.
Image courtesy City of Vancouver via YouTube.
There are other benefits to adding the tech to city services, according to the mayor’s supporters. Jarrett Vaughan, an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia who teaches courses on crypto fundamentals and NFTs, submitted an unsolicited proposal to the Vancouver Parks Board in late March. Alongside Burnaby-based cleantech company MintGreen, he’s proposing to warm the soon-to-be-rebuilt Kitsilano pool with “digital boilers”: a system that uses the huge amount of heat generated by Bitcoin miners to increase the water temperature. The cryptocurrency created from those miners could then be sold to offset the operations of the pool, he says, helping keep it open year-round.
Although the proposal submission was first confirmed on April 1— April Fools’ Day—Vaughan is clear it’s no joke. The professor says he and the Kits Pool Swimmers are actively meeting with City of Vancouver staff and the new pool architects at the feasibility stage of the site’s redesign, so it can be potentially built into the development.
“In addition to the pool, there’s opportunities with the size of the digital boiler that we are proposing,” he says. “[We can] sell energy to businesses in the area, which we call district energy, and to organizations like [the nearby 10.5-acre housing development] Sen̓áḵw. This is similar to the Olympic Village district energy project, where they use geothermic energy to create hot water for the Olympic Village real estate developments.”
Race condition
Those pro-crypto arguments have yet to convince the province. The ruling NDP party has already said that it has no interest whatsoever in having Vancouver put Bitcoin on the balance sheet, or to integrate it into city dealings. The intent of the B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs’ position is that public funds are not exposed to undue risk.
Sim acknowledges that the B.C. government has a responsibility to make sure that the City of Vancouver is handling money in a reliable way, and is clear that he is in no way attacking the municipality’s big brother. But education, he hopes, is the way to plunge that blockage. Sim has previously gone on record to say that the technology and its adoption are “moving at the speed of light.” The NDP leaders risk being left behind, he implies, and stalling Vancouver with it.
“We have an incredible ecosystem here that’s literally changing the world right in our backyard. And we should be totally stoked about that.”
Mayor Ken Sim
If the overdue report recommends adding Bitcoin to the city’s balance sheet, one of the key decisions will be how to do so. The first option would be buying into a Bitcoin ETF: a type of investment fund that lets someone hold shares tied to the cryptocurrency’s price, without actually owning the digital coins. Second, and Sim’s preference, is to mine Bitcoin itself: a process that uses energy-intensive computers to solve complex math problems, where operators earn Bitcoin as a reward. But pick the wrong one—or wait too long—Sim warns, and the whole endeavour might be pointless.
“There is a race here,” Sim said, looking skyward as he ran through the calculation in the Dapper Labs office. “I think if we’re lucky, we have about six months. In five years … it’s going to be everywhere, right? But the opportunity is gonna be missed, so we really have to push. And if I didn’t think this was possible, [I wouldn’t] want to waste our time.”
Bitcoin is a limited resource. Only 21 million coins will ever be mined, building a scarcity that gives the cryptocurrency its value. Nearly 20 million have already been created, and the battle to “win” the next coin is becoming increasingly difficult. The way that Bitcoin is awarded is not linear; while the first miner to solve each complex computer problem is rewarded with a set number of coins, this bounty decreases over time in an event called “halving,” which happens every four years. Because of the limited supply and the decreasing rewards, mining Bitcoin is becoming harder and more competitive.
“I’m not giving any investment advice whatsoever. [But] when you have an asset that has a fixed cap—there’s only going to be 21 million—it’s going to look different than anything we’ve ever seen. And once all the excess supply is mopped up, this thing’s going to rocket, potentially,” Sim speculates, aligned with the views of crypto supporters. “Which means, once that happens, Vancouver reduces its massive opportunity to get ahead of this thing.”
Image courtesy Coinbase / Penrose Partners.
In the third calendar year of his four-year term, the mayor is doubtless considering his legacy. While he hopes his Bitcoin bid will set up Vancouver for an economic boom, at a time when American tariffs have wobbled economic stability and Canada is facing a recession, Sim has tied that to a global narrative.
The mayor hinted at the Stand With Crypto event that two cities in B.C. are thinking about putting Bitcoin on the books and teased that the mayor of Santa Monica has reached out for a call. People on the other side of the planet might not know who the mayor of Vancouver is, Sim said, but “they know the mayor of Vancouver is doing something,” and they associate that with the city.
At the national level, Sim argued that demonstrating Bitcoin can be successfully integrated into a city’s financial strategy de-risks the approach for other municipalities in Canada—assuming, of course, that their provincial laws permit it. Doing so opens up new opportunities across the map, he says, while putting a push-pin on Vancouver as the innovator.
“With the exception of maybe Toronto or Montreal, if you’re a smaller city, all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Well, Vancouver can do it. Why can’t we?’ he says. “And then in the bigger cities, they may say, ‘Well, that’s different. Vancouver’s smaller.’ So, they’ll get a lot of pressure. I think we give people a lot of cover, and it’s great.”
Uncertain future
But with his disappointing election results and a fresh council in session, the future of Sim’s Bitcoin-friendly city appears to be in jeopardy.
While the mayor still holds a majority in City Hall, Sim was clear on one point throughout the byelection campaign: he “needs to get those two councillors elected” in order to pass any further Bitcoin policies. While all but two councillors voted to support the city staff’s research, even Sim’s ABC colleagues raised reservations on the controversial topic. “We will barely have the numbers with these two additional people,” Sim said of candidates Stein and Kaisers before their defeat.
But the mayor keeps trying. Since mid-December, Sim has brought in a number of guests from around the world to speak to the council members about Bitcoin. Among them was Jeff Booth, co-founder of TON Society, which curates a community on blockchain, the foundational technology on which cryptocurrencies are built. The “vast majority” of the council showed up, Sim said, signalling that he believes the delegates can “make informed decisions” when the report arrives.
Letting go of what he admits is an “unpopular” policy is the safer political bet, but the mayor, with his entrepreneurial and investment banking background, has built his brand on big risks for big rewards.
“If we get Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and if it does what it potentially can do, we could set the city up for the next 100 years—and that’s super exciting,” Sim said. “My God, we have an incredible ecosystem here that’s literally changing the world right in our backyard. And we should be totally stoked about that.”
Feature image courtesy Coinbase / Penrose Partners.