I’ve had many of my friends who are new and ask me questions about Bitcoin inquire: “Wouldn’t it be just great if I got paid in Bitcoin?” While there are people and companies out there that will compensate you for work and services in Bitcoin, most people with jobs that pay fiat only pay fiat. Bitwage is a service that hopes to address that and other payroll solutions for the cryptocurrency age.

Getting Bitcoin can sometimes be a very unwelcoming experience for the newcomer, especially for those who may not understand much of the technology behind the currency. Bitcoin ATMs usually take fairly large cuts, cryptocurrency exchanges often ask for a lot of information that may leave the user skeptical, and mining is almost entirely impossible to do now in any profitable way -unless you have access to free electricity and hardware-. Bitwage is incredibly thorough, secure, and functional. I’ve recently had the pleasure of creating an account for myself and have explored its features and goals, quite honestly I’m impressed. In fact, my employer – The Merkle – uses Bitwage to issue payroll to me and other writers.

Employers are able to set up accounts for themselves directly on Bitwage and then add employees to their team wage distributions. This provides a great way to keep track of wages, invoices, and transactions between the employer and the employee which does two things. One, it allows employers of small -and large- businesses that may have remote workers tied into a payroll program that is not one of the huge providers which hold a worrying amount of the industry’s market share. Two, those same remote workers are able to be paid in practically any currency they want, fiat and Bitcoin. If you have a worker in China, but your company is based in Ireland you can pay out the amount in Euros and Bitwage will pay the worker the reflective amount in Chinese Yuan. Of course, if the worker wanted to be paid in Bitcoin, they would just choose that as their distribution method instead. It frees workers to earn the currency

But this still does not really address our “Workers in Fiat Only” problem I mentioned in the beginning of this article. Yet, Bitwage has figured it out with relative ease in an eloquently simple manner. As an account holder, you are able to apply for invoicing external (non-Bitwage affiliated) workplaces. A word of warning, be sure that the information and authentication evidence you provide is both complete and that picture you send are extremely clear. They are sticklers for this -which I found out first hand, my photos were not good enough quality-, but it is in the interest of security so it makes sense. Then, you essentially open a bank account with Bitwage. You then provide your fiat only employer with the information to have a percentage of your paycheck go to that account. Bitwage then exchanges the fiat in that account and deposits Bitcoin in the address(es) that you provide them. It usually only take about an extra day and a half to two days to do this, and the fees are extremely reasonable.

Overall, this is a great service, I believe. It is transparent, insanely secure, and liberating but still, elegant, easy, and effective. While other employers take a while to catch up with the cryptocurrency movement, you can get ahead of them -and before the price of Bitcoin goes to the moon!- with Bitwage. Quite simply, it solves the “Workers in Fiat Only” problem. 

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