Salary in Bitcoin, is it a good idea?

[wobber]

I'm coming back with my weird ideas.

I am thinking of quitting current job and search for one to be paid only in Bitcoins. How I would do it:

- paid on the last days of each month.
- salary of 600-1000 dollars payable in BTC
- remote work in IT and telecom (GSM, UMTS, VoIP, sys admin security-focused)
- 2 weeks notice on each side

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[massivebitman]

This isn't related to speculation.

It's a bad idea. Why don't you just spend your entire salary on bitcoins?

Then you can struggle around trying to convert them back to fiat whenever you want to do anything useful, like buy food.

If you're lucky enough to be near a bitcoin atm this might not be so hard to do... Still why bother.

[wobber]

Yeah, not exactly speculation-related.

I guess people here aren't very interested in this, just topics like "Price up or down?".

Having some personal issues so I'll take a break a few years - going offline. Not checking email, facebook, mtgox or speculation forum

Best part: writing a bot on Raspberry Pi to do ifup eth0 last day of each month, check mtgox price, calculate how many coins are necessary for $500, move coins to Mtgox, sell, transfer funds to bank account. Then ifdown eth0

Surely I'll have to troubleshoot a few times...

[Elwar]

It would certainly save the hassle of converting my paychecks every two weeks (along with the wait for transfer to dwolla).

[Rygon]

It's a good idea for the broader community because long term contracts will help stabilize the price. But there's no need to go all in, and I doubt you'll find many employers willing to take that much exchange risk. But why not 10% of salary? If you and the employer agree on a $1000/week salary for six months, for example, why not ask for $900 fiat and BTC1? Or, if the idea is to save on international fiat transfer fees, agree to the $900 fiat to be paid in BTC at the exchange rate on payday.

[Elwar]

I doubt you'll find many employers willing to take that much exchange risk.

I believe it is implied that the employer would pay bitcoins based upon the current rate of exchange to government currency.

[Snowfire]

No contract denominated in Bitcoin is legally enforceable, because Bitcoin is not legal tender. So a salary contract  in Bitcoin is merely a gentlemen's agreement: a good idea only if the employer is completely trustworthy (whatever you decide that to mean.)

[wolongong]

No contract denominated in Bitcoin is legally enforceable, because Bitcoin is not legal tender. So a salary contract  in Bitcoin is merely a gentlemen's agreement: a good idea only if the employer is completely trustworthy (whatever you decide that to mean.)

..and that's different from getting a cheque how!?

[firefop]

No contract denominated in Bitcoin is legally enforceable, because Bitcoin is not legal tender. So a salary contract  in Bitcoin is merely a gentlemen's agreement: a good idea only if the employer is completely trustworthy (whatever you decide that to mean.)

..and that's different from getting a cheque how!?

It isn't.

Here's the thing about this discussion. It may work on a small scale, but right now the easy to access exchanged (markets) would make a very bad experience if some large payroll company started doing this on the last day of every month. . . there would be an immediate spike in the price due to them buying up supplies of btc and the employees would lose out on the deal because those close to the start of the list would get more btc and the ones near the next would be near the end of the micro bubble and get less.

Then once the price settles, employee #1 would have 10 btc, and employee #20000 would have less (maybe 9 or or less depending on how big the payroll company was. In any event, the farther down the list the less number of btc the employee would end up with... and would effectively be absorbing the instability caused by the payroll company in the first place.

The alternatives to this are limited, but doable:

1. payroll company accumulates bitcoins slowly over time - then pays employees with them on 'pay day' --- here the payroll company exposes itself to risk re:bitcoin exchange rate changes between purchase of bitcoin and payment to employees.

2. payroll company load balances paydays over the course of a month between everyone it pays (your payday is the 1st, mine is the 2nd, his is the 3rd, etc) to mitigate the 'payday spike' on the exchanges. in this scenario, most of the risk is given to the employee rather than the company.

3. payday goes away and each employee is paid each day for his work that day in btc - this would mitigate the risk of the payroll company because they'd be holding btc only long enough to send it to the employee, and avoid exchanges being 'spiked' in the way I've described, but it would make it even harder on the employee because getting such micro payments exposes him to even more market rate issues since now he's forced to hold enough on an exchange or wallet somewhere before he can feasibly 'cash it out'

~

of course all these go out the window if you were able to purchase all of your needs with bitcoin.

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personally, I would probably favor a job that paid me min wage + some other amount in btc. But that would be purely for tax evasion purposes.

[1m1nd]

Surely it would be better to look for a new job, whilst keeping your current one?

[ManBearPig]

No, not your salary. But BTC with your disposable income.

When the time is right though, can we make a documentary entitled: "How I lived on Bitcoin for a month"?

[megablue]

bad idea, your employees can sue you for not paying their salary, as of you dont have proof of actually paying them lol.

[kevinmyers80]

I think it's a bad idea because the BT is still not very stable for these things ...

[Snowfire]

..and that's different from getting a cheque how!?

If someone writes you a bad check denominated in ordinary currency, you are legally entitled to seek restitution. Virtually all jurisdictions have specific laws about this. If the same person promises to pay you X BTC and then decides not to do so, what recourse do you have?

Also, the courts could impose troublesome readings of minimum-wage statutes e.g. you failed to pay So-and-so at least so many dollars per hour (and sorry, Bitcoins are not dollars and don't count.) The law has not caught up to the existence of cryptocurrencies yet.

[wolongong]

If someone writes you a bad check denominated in ordinary currency, you are legally entitled to seek restitution. Virtually all jurisdictions have specific laws about this. If the same person promises to pay you X BTC and then decides not to do so, what recourse do you have?

The same recourse as any contract dispute. Either you have chosen an arbitrator in advance or you take it to the courts.

Thing is with Anglo-American jurisdictions that they prefer to take the route of compensation over fulfillment. In the USA you will likely get a relief in the form of a dollar amount, see Holmes "The duty to keep a contract at common law means a prediction that you must pay damages if you do not keep it,  and nothing else."

Some jurisdictions force fulfillment by eg. awarding a penalty for every day the BTCs are not delivered.

Also, the courts could impose troublesome readings of minimum-wage statutes e.g. you failed to pay So-and-so at least so many dollars per hour (and sorry, Bitcoins are not dollars and don't count.) The law has not caught up to the existence of cryptocurrencies yet.

OP refers to a salary in USD to be settled in BTC, so I doubt that's going to be an issue.

[Kaiji]

Bitcoin payments for online jobs would be better. If freelance job websites like odesk accepted bitcoin payments it could be the next big step for bitcoins.

[taotree]

Bitcoin payments for online jobs would be better. If freelance job websites like odesk accepted bitcoin payments it could be the next big step for bitcoins.

Like these?

http://bittask.com/

http://www.bitcoinjobs.com/

I just found these by a quick google. I don't know how solid things like this are yet. But... it's interesting.

[arobinson]

It will be more ideal once the price stabilizes somewhere

[Kluge]

No, not your salary. But BTC with your disposable income.

When the time is right though, can we make a documentary entitled: "How I lived on Bitcoin for a month"?

Agree with that. Especially nobody with a family should even consider getting paid in Bitcoin while it's so volatile. If you're working to increase your money score - sure, why not? Long-term, Bitcoin's has a ton of potential, so it's pretty easy to be bullish. If you're working to survive, absolutely not. I'd definitely convert a good chunk of USD to BTC for retirement, but I'm very young, so I have the benefit of being able to recover relatively quickly and easily.

This has been talked about before, though. I think the most logical way of this playing out is to have employer direct deposit into a "Bitcoin bank" which can immediately convert the USD to BTC (BitInstant style). A lot of employers let you divvy up your pay to different banks/CUs, so you could put, say - 20% "automatically" into Bitcoin, and still have 80% in USD. The employer doesn't need to do anything different than they already do - they still get their paper trail, taxes are still withheld as required, etc.

[Malawi]

I'm coming back with my weird ideas.

I am thinking of quitting current job and search for one to be paid only in Bitcoins. How I would do it:

- paid on the last days of each month.
- salary of 600-1000 dollars payable in BTC
- remote work in IT and telecom (GSM, UMTS, VoIP, sys admin security-focused)
- 2 weeks notice on each side

I don't see the advantage, but I'm sure it's doable

If you have enough money to live off for some time, and want to go long on BTC, I think it would be better to transfer a lump of money to an exchange and place some buy orders. That way you know how many BTC's you get, and can decide when to exchange etc. It fluctuates quite a bit, so by timing the buys just a little instead of buying at market at some specific time each month, you should get more BTC.

You have to remember that it's like getting paid in EUR, and in the same way you cannot use BTC for your daily grocery shopping.

BTW: If this is more of a sideline operation, it would make more sense to be paid in BTC than if it's your dayjob.