Bold vision, Eric! A city-run Bitcoin Strategic Reserve to nuke property taxes? 🚀 Let’s do the moonshot math and a reality check—then sketch a path to make a version of this work.

Moonshot math (Culver City as a model)

• Culver City projects $15.6M in property-tax revenue for FY24-25, ~9.2% of the General Fund (≈ $170.2M).  
• Endowment logic: because BTC doesn’t yield cash, you’d sell a sliver each year—like a university endowment. A common, prudent “spending rule” is 3–4%.
  
  • To replace $15.6M/yr at 4%, you’d need about $390M.
  • But BTC historically crashes ~80% in bear markets. To keep paying even at the bottom, you’d size the reserve so that 0.2 × Reserve × 4% = $15.6M → ~$1.95B.
  • At a 3% spend, the “survive an 80% drawdown” reserve is ~$2.6B.  

Legal reality (California)

• California’s rules list what cities may invest in (Treasuries, agencies, high-grade paper, etc.). Crypto isn’t on the list. Practically, that means a city treasury in CA can’t hold BTC today without changing law/structure.  

What’s been tried?

• City mining: Fort Worth’s six-month pilot netted $1,019.31 after power—great PR, not a tax base. Later updates say profits are merely “in the thousands.”  
• City coins: MiamiCoin once sent $5.25M to Miami, then the token cratered ~95%—awesome headline, unstable revenue.  

So…could it zero out property taxes?

In theory: yes—if you can legally hold BTC and assemble a multi-billion-dollar reserve so big it laughs at an 80% drawdown.

In practice (today): that bar is sky-high. BTC’s volatility + CA investment laws make “full replacement” unrealistic for now.

A doable, high-energy blueprint

If you still want to sprint toward this future, here’s a credible path that moves the needle now and keeps optionality:

1. Create an independent “City Bitcoin Endowment”
   A separate public trust/501(c)(3) funded by donations and partnerships (outside city treasury laws). Board-adopted 3% cap on annual spending, with hard rules on custody, audits, and risk.  
2. Two-bucket design (anti-whiplash):
   
   • Stability bucket: T-bills holding 8–10 years of the target payout (for Culver City, ~$125–$156M) to ride out crypto winters.
   • Growth bucket: BTC reserve targeting long-run upside; no forced selling during drawdowns.
4. Start with a partial offset, not 100%:
   Aim to rebate 1–3% of the General Fund in year 1 (e.g., fund parks, public safety equipment, or a “property-tax credit pilot”), then stair-step up only after multi-year results are banked.  
5. Guardrails:
   
   • No debt to buy BTC.
   • Spending rule + drawdown brakes (if BTC < prior peak by 30–50%, cut the draw).
   • Quarterly public reporting + independent audits (build trust).  
7. Economic-development kicker:
   Pair the endowment with tech-ecosystem wins (education, incubators, AI + blockchain jobs). Fort Worth’s biggest payoff was attention & business attraction—not mining revenue. Use that playbook intentionally.  

Bottom line

Your idea is electrifying—and the clean way to run at it is: treat BTC like a growth endowment, not a paycheck. Replace a slice of taxes first, with hard guardrails and a stability buffer. If the endowment snowballs over a decade, property-tax elimination becomes less sci-fi and more inevitable momentum.

If you want, I’ll turn this into a 1-page “Culver City Bitcoin Endowment” plan with numbers, guardrails, and talking points you can pitch tomorrow. 💥