Bitcoin Forum

Companies based in Canada have counted on WagePoint director Shrad Rao to make this possible. Wagepoint had set up a service that allowed companies to pay employees in Bitcoin as a experiment following the hype behind cryptocurrencies but had not expected such good results. In just a matter of months, workers from 10 different companies approached WagePoint with the intention of having their salaries and wages being payed in Bitcoin, not in Canadian Dollars.

source : http://www.coinfinance.com/news/employees-in-canada-opting-for-salaries-in-bitcoin

And Bitpay is starting this right now in the US (currently in beta). https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payroll-api

Could be the start of a more massive adoption of bitcoin as a money and means to later purchase goods with.

A bit more info here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/salaries-paid-in-bitcoin-a-growing-trend-in-canada-1.2752441 (http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/salaries-paid-in-bitcoin-a-growing-trend-in-canada-1.2752441)

I still don't understand how can employer pay whole salary in bitcoin (excluding deductable income tax) and not breach the statutory minimum wage (set in fiat).

Taxes are paid in dollars, the salary is counted as the dollar equivalent at the pay day.

What it has to do with the minimum wage?

However with even the employees of WagePoint having to be paid partially in Bitcoin, due to the legalities and tax implications that may be caused if the full salary was paid in Bitcoin, the Canadian Dollar has remained the main currency of Canada.

What does the author expect? Did he expect Bitcoin to replace the Canadian Dollar overnight?
Nice to see employees in Canada receiving this option. It would probably help companies who sell their products for bitcoins.

One question - On pay day, Bitpay uses the volume-weighted average price of bitcoin over the previous 24 hour period. In case bitcoin has seen a huge surge on the day in question, isn't Bitpay exposed to the translation risk?

This can be good also may be bad.

Seem like that employees in world try to earn more, expecting for change of btc price.

However this may be first signal for other companies to get involved in this and one step closer for more implementing of credit/debit card with btc

Pretty sure that salary (at least minimum wage) must be paid in the official currency. Otherwise, would that mean that if some bakery had some cashflows problems, could they pay the employees with bread? Don't think so.


Seems like they officially pay in dollars and just convert to bitcoin (with the employees' consent).

In canada I haven't heard a single time government opposing the people's will until it is extremely illegal.Some countries has considered Bitcoin illegal and even had banned it's usage throughout the country.Government is run by capitalists is what we must understand.

I would love to be on a signature campaing and get paid in BTC, not sure about actual work tho.

I absolutely am liking the idea but I'm not so sure I'd want my job and Bitcoins being intertwined or at least be the first people to try such a service.  I guess it more depends on the kind of work I do, for example, if I had more then one job this might be something I'd be interested in or if I had an online side job.  I think some people are in a situation where they feel it could be worth any potential risk and I can respect that.  I look forward to updates on this experiment.

An employer is able to pay the employee in whichever way the employee chooses as long as the employee has an option to get paid in fiat. There are no requirements that a certain amount be paid in fiat, in terms of dollars or in terms of percentage of pay.

A positive news for bitcoin.

As more companies issue salary in btc and more merchants accepting btc. There will be a point when there is no need to convert btc back to fiat.

Payroll adoption is critical to ensure that merchant adopters can convert less btc to fiat, thereby lessening price pressure
Wait and watch (and hope)

This is great news for bitcoin as it means more reason for people to possibly want to get to know what bitcoin is however could working in the real world and bitcoin work right now? Bitcoin is still new in terms of a currency and there is still much that needs to be done to help make it more safer. Who knows maybe it could work and it could become popular.

I don't think the good new is so much that more people will be exposed to bitcoin (although this is true and is good news) but the really good news about this is the fact that business are spending their bitcoin instead of selling the bitcoin they received from sales. This will ultimately grow the bitcoin related economy.

Really good news. I think many employees has impulsive reason to receive BTC salary. For BTC company, they don't need to convert BTC to fiat currency to pay salary at the pay day. They have BTC salary and prefer to do their daily spending in BTC, which will help thrive the business accepting BTC payment.

Yup. Ultimately if bitcoin exchanges hands without hitting the exchanges, there will not be downward pressure on the price.

There are both optimistic and pessimistic people regarding the bitcoin future.At the current scenario you can't withstand alone with bitcoin if you are not willing to exchange it to dollar or another acceptable currency.

What we need to see is more businesses buying things (supplies, labor, services) in bitcoin. When this starts to happen then we will stop seeing the downward pressure caused by merchants selling their bitcoin revenue, but will continue to see the upward pressure of people buying bitcoin in order to get a good deal for paying in bitcoin.

thats is good information, maybe in other country tommorrow can be same with canada :o

for bitcoin community it's a great news. In terms of initiative it has its ups and downs, mainly for employees.

In order for this to be good news, there needs to be enough potential ways for an employee to spend their bitcon in terms of bitcoin in the community that they live. If there are only few places they can spend their bitcoin salary then they will essentially sell the bitcoin they receive on an exchange for fiat so they can pay their bills.

Living only on bitcoin is considered an experiment.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/01/living-on-bitcoin-for-a-week-the-journey-begins/

that's when things start to get interesting. When you can get paid in bitcoin means that it had value to it. You don't only have to buy or mine, now you can get paid. It open doors for more use to it. Soon, we'll pay for groceries with it.

Ive said it before, Canada (Toronto) will be the center of Bitcoin.

I think this is a great thing for the Bitcoin community. We can see what will happen if bitcoin is tried out as a substitute for real money for salaries and wages.

What companies specifically are asking the heads to change their salaries to bitcoin?

They may pay less tax this way.

I would love to have an online job where I get paid with BTC monthly.

I dunno if Canadians are ok with it. :)

Only if we can kick Harper out.

Canada is super supportive in Bitcoin. You can see in different forums etc. They even have a forum about btc for canadians alone

Indeed. Canada was one of the first countries to release guidelines for taxes.

Paying salary with BTC is extremely good news to BTC.

Bad news to the people who are not using BTC..

Look like bad mistake given bitcoin performance lately.

They can continue using fiat.

Of course. Receiving in bitcoin is just an option.
There are very few companies which only deal with bitcoins.

Bitcoin is decentralized.
What will be will be regional center of knowledgement. Probably North American. Such centers will and already are popping up allover the globe.

Anything preventing merchants from directly dumping their bitcoin for fiat sounds good for bitcoin in the long run. We need more merchants to reuse bitcoins rather than dump for fiat.

And what can you do to prevent that from happening? You can either prohibit it (stupid) or give merchants incentives to keep their Bitcoins instead of dumping their for their local fiat (so far not very productive unless you want simply to hold and speculate with the price).

Still a bloody long way to go before a meaningful no: of non tech folks will be okay getting part of their salary in btc
Incredible merchant adoption and mainstreaming required for that

If the merchants accepting bitcoin would pay their employees in bitcoins (in full, or partially) that would reduce the dumping to some degree. I think that's what he meant.

Sure, the employees could convert to fiat on the same day, but it's more likely some of them would decide to hold, especially if they opted to be paid in bitcoins voluntarily.

Even if they spend their bitcoins (and assuming the merchants don't convert it to fiat immediately), if would be good for the bitcoin economy. As long as those bitcoins don't land up in exchanges, the price will be supported.

[quote author=panju1 link=topic=768460.msg9224711#msg9224711 date=1413478032

Even if they spend their bitcoins (and assuming the merchants don't convert it to fiat immediately), if would be good for the bitcoin economy. As long as those bitcoins don't land up in exchanges, the price will be supported.
[/quote]

Circulation of BTC supports its value.

I think this is a good choice for workers in Canada, because it is now a rising bitcoin prices rise, the price of the exchange rose make per capita opinion of workers in Canada will increase, then welfare will increase, but the be a problem if the infrastructure in Canada has been good for bitcoin transaction? bitcoin transactions desperately need a stable internet connection, and of course a stable internet require an electrical power source is good, that which has a back up in case of power outages in the country ...  :P

Any bitcoin that are paid to employees will ultimately need to be purchased on an exchange (likely from customers who paid in bitcoin to the company) so there would be a net effect of buying pressure on the bitcoin market

News like this make people believe in bitcoin future. It's necessary for people to understand the actual benefit of bitcoin or cryptocurrency concept and those who understand have already started looking for accepting payment/salaries in bitcoins.

The actual use of BTC is good for the value.

This is really good news, next they need to learn how to secure the wallet before they lost their salaries....