Mayor of Cash-Strapped Louisiana City Pitches ICO

Joel Robideaux, the mayor-president of the Louisiana city and parish of Lafayette, urged local residents on Thursday to consider launching an initial coin offering.

Lafayette parish is in dire financial straits, officials say.

According to local reports, Robideaux favors a less conventional solution: create a cryptocurrency and sell it.

He said Thursday that the parish should launch its own crypto, distribute it through an ICO, and use the proceeds to "Build a living lab of blockchain researchers and developers," the Acadiana Advocate reports.

The mayor-president did not explain what function this cryptocurrency would serve besides raising funds.

The city of Berkeley, California, proposed creating a cryptocurrency earlier this year, describing the tokens as "Crypto enabled microbonds."

Berkeley's impetus is a funding crunch.

One Berkeley official presented the ICO in explicitly political terms, saying: "The resistance requires a token."

Cryptocurrency, he said, is "Not just a bunch of global libertarians that want unregulated, untraceable and secure digital currency transactions."

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