Getting paid in bitcoin? You should be offended, apparently. | Source: Shutterstock; Edited by CCN
By CCN Markets: In a sweeping article that bashes Bitcoin and it’s kindred, Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times compares cryptocurrency salary earners to modern-day slaves.
Pointing to the BBC show ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, Kaminska highlights a very relevant but misguided example of celebrity Kate Winslet who travels to Sweden to explore her ancestry.
“There she learnt her relative was paid entirely in tokens that could only be redeemed for goods on the estate, making him a de facto bonded slave of the landlord.”
In those times your financial fate was bound to the local economy and the rulers who ran it. The argument goes that today that same scenario is playing out thanks to the myriad world of sh*tcoins making their way to market.
There’s just one problem with this argument.
There Is No Bitcoin Landlord
UPDATE: Bitcoin continues to produce block after block after block of transactions.
It doesn’t care about your feelings, your opinions, your politics, your religion, or your outrage.
— Pomp ? (@APompliano) August 18, 2019
In the days of yore, the head honcho had the final say. You were lucky if your dictator was benevolent. Today, however, the tables have turned. There is no Bitcoin landlord. There is no aristocrat telling you what you can and can’t do with your hard-earned crypto. And that’s the point.
By her own words, Kaminska acknowledges that a growing number of workers are already willing to ‘waive regular payments’ in favor of Bitcoin. Take these NFL players for example. Regardless, she still isn’t convinced yet it’s practical:
“While cryptocurrency is theoretically exchangeable, and thus taxable, its market value and acceptability is hardly predictable. It’s hard, on that basis, for the liberty-minded to square a move back to tokenised payments with progress.”
The irony here is that we already live in a tokenized payment world. It’s called the government. Replace ‘bosses’ with the state and ‘company scrip’ with your national currency and voilà – you get a new kind of repression but on a grander scale.
Earning a Bitcoin Salary. It’s Only a Matter of Time
The fact is, as history shows, anything can be used as a ‘salary’ and all earners are bound in some way to their bosses. It’s widely believed that the word itself is derived from the Roman word Salaria which has salt at its root.
At the time, Roman soldiers were partly compensated in the precious commodity. Salt was quite expensive and held its value well for the legions. Guess what else is expensive and continues to hold its value. Bitcoin.
Salt – The Valuable Commodity That Salary Got Its Name From. Source: Pixabay
In a world where currency devaluation is the new arms race, it’s only a matter of time before earning a Bitcoin salary becomes the new norm.
The nature of the crypto beast highlights the progression of economies. The old highly localized ones gave way to larger forms. And now the emerging globalized economy is taking center stage.
A whole new range of possibilities lies on the table. This time around, though, no self-proclaimed fat cats who draw artificial national borders can profit from them.
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