Here’s how much New York Mayor Eric Adams raised his Bitcoin bet

Cryptocurrencies have come a long way from an obscure asset class to a mainstream investment. In this way, they have unsurprisingly become a topic of political discussion. The debates involve more than just regulations – lately, attitudes towards digital assets are becoming more and more of a divide between the two major political parties in the United States – the Democrats and the Republicans.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are largely supportive of the new asset class. The focus on deregulation and free market principles fits well with cryptocurrency. Likewise, it’s not exactly shocking that Democrats, who typically support stricter regulation, are lagging behind their competitors in cryptocurrency adoption.

Of course, there are outliers – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is perhaps the highest-ranking Democrat to express a pro-crypto opinion. However, he is not his party’s first supporter – that title most likely belongs to Eric Adams, the controversial mayor of New York.

In 2022, Adams was widely ridiculed for his decision to receive his first three paychecks in the form of Bitcoin (BTC). At an event at the America LGBTQ+ Museum on December 3, the mayor of the Big Apple reflected on that time – and seemed to get the last laugh. Here’s how much these three paychecks might be worth right now.

Adams already received a hefty sum of Bitcoin in 2022

Before actually taking office, then-Mayor-elect Adams announced his intention to receive payments in the form of BTC in early late 2021. As of early January of this year, Adams had not yet received his first paycheck, as covered by Finbold.

Taking taxes into account, each check would have given Adams about $10,000, according to publicly available data. He took office on January 1st – so for simplicity we will assume he received his first check on February 1st – and additional checks on March 1st and April 1st, 2022.

At the time of initial review, Bitcoin was trading at around $38,650. On March 1, 2022, the leading digital asset was priced at $43,230 and at the time of the third paycheck it was trading at $45,530. At press time, BTC was trading at $102,632.

Now let’s compare this price to the prices at the time Adams was paid. The price of the leading cryptocurrency has since increased by 165.54%, 137.40% and 125.41%, respectively. The average profit is therefore 142.78% on a $30,000 investment – in other words, Adams’ BTC is now worth about $72,834, a profit of $42,834.

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