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Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

stripe.com

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Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#101

Post by hef19898 »

boh wrote: post #51

As companies continually erode employee benefits and aggressively seek out ever cheaper labor, we have to continually be reminded how innovative and great this "massive shift enabled in large part by new technology" is going to be. Now you're going to get paid in unregulated tokens, isn't that amazing! And guess what? Not using actual money also let's them access "millions of talented freelancers live in countries wh…

>> The future of work

Heck, if the future of work is limited freelance gigs, without any workers rights and protection, and being paid in potentially worthless crypto tokens, it is a very ugly future.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#102

Post by Karrot_Kream »

zeroclip wrote: post #98
jsemrau wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were evaluating ETH payouts for Finclout and at the time transaction fees was a huge barrier. We are currently working with the Cardano chain because it allows for a min payout of 1 ADA which makes users happy when they get payouts more frequently and us happy because fees are low.

Personally feel that a better solution long term is Ethereum L2 payouts.

L2s are still pretty young. Polygon is popular but is ultimately a sidechain. Optimism hasn't rolled out fully. I understand why some would not want to trust L2s yet.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#103

Post by Karrot_Kream »

zeroclip wrote: post #92

This is good but I wish it wasn’t specific to Braintrust. Have been in crypto for a while and have never heard of Braintrust or their token. Freelancers should just be paid directly in a ERC20, Stripe could take a small fee on transfers for their UX and API services, no need for a DAO or separate BTRST token.

As far as I can tell, this is just an article from Stripe about Braintrust using Stripe Connect for USDC payouts. This doesn't seem to be an actual product by Stripe. Braintrust is managing the platform but using Stripe for payouts. Agreed, I haven't heard of Braintrust or their token either which would make me cautious were I to use the platform.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#104

Post by crypt1d »

yao420 wrote: post #72
karaterobot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is very popular among people working in rich countries who send remittances back to their families in other countries. That's a legitimate use, a very popular use, and is obviously what Stripe is going for here.

Coinbase closed their remittance project due to absolutely minuscule usage. Like a couple thousand of dollars a month or value being transferred. If the biggest player in the crypto space can’t get enough users, I’m doubting any real adoption.

Let's not mistake Coinbase's ability to execute for a lack of user interest. If anything, Coinbase has plenty of failed projects under their belt (and while they are certainly popular in the US, they are not the 'biggest player' by any measure).

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#105

Post by hkt »

datadata wrote: post #86
boh wrote: post #51

As companies continually erode employee benefits and aggressively seek out ever cheaper labor, we have to continually be reminded how innovative and great this "massive shift enabled in large part by new technology" is going to be. Now you're going to get paid in unregulated tokens, isn't that amazing! And guess what? Not using actual money also let's them access "millions of talented freelancers live in countries wh…

Cheaper labor is sought, but also workers are capable of doing more and more productive work due to technology. The net is economic growth. Maybe I am an optimist, but generally things have gotten better. For example poverty globally has been plummeting. Given also this announcement is a new capability for how to get paid, not an impairment or obligation, I would hope it wouldn't have detrimental results.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in the UK we have a woeful record of investing in anything new, at least in recent memory. Offshoring and outsourcing are both cheaper than doing anything new with technology, so companies do it whenever they can.

Which is to say that, certainly for now, there's a conflict between technological progress and profit, because cheap labour is so reliable and de-risked compared to eg, creating new machines to automate a process that is currently outsourced. Risks include being undercut by cheap labour, too.

All of which is to say, I don't share your optimism. Maybe there's a case to be made for global full employment being preferable to a highly automated economy, but that begs the question of how to make work itself less hostile to life.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#106

Post by zeroclip »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #102
zeroclip wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally feel that a better solution long term is Ethereum L2 payouts.

L2s are still pretty young. Polygon is popular but is ultimately a sidechain. Optimism hasn't rolled out fully. I understand why some would not want to trust L2s yet.

Agreed, although short term solutions like having freelancers paid in ADA just to avoid ETH fees might end up hurting users and eroding their trust in blockchains in the long run.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#107

Post by jsemrau »

zeroclip wrote: post #98
jsemrau wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were evaluating ETH payouts for Finclout and at the time transaction fees was a huge barrier. We are currently working with the Cardano chain because it allows for a min payout of 1 ADA which makes users happy when they get payouts more frequently and us happy because fees are low.

Personally feel that a better solution long term is Ethereum L2 payouts.

The future of payouts will be omni-chain. Now that ETH is PoS, it is actually one of the benefits of the move, that there is a treasury with non-random payout cycles.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#108

Post by ilammy »

koolba wrote: post #31
imachine1980_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those, work remote from argentine is simply pay 90 tax becouse of a broken conversion rate technically, becouse you can pay 15 income tax and don't but have a company and return assets like bonds, is a mess . this is really useful and I trust stripe more than the competition

What does “pay 90 tax” mean? Surely you don’t mean paying a 90% tax rate?!

Probably an exaggeration, but caveats apply.

Say, you get paid in USD.

    You got paid: 10000 USD

    Income tax: 15%

    Government exchange rate: 130 ARS per 1 USD
    Unofficial exchange rate: 330 ARS per 1 USD
Now, if you do things like daddy government says and use the official rate, you end up with this amount:

    10000 USD * 130 = 1300000 ARS  and then  1300000 * (1 - 0.15) = 1105000
But if you do what's good for you and still pay taxes to not go to jail:

    10000 USD * 330 = 3300000 ARS  and then  3300000 * (1 - 0.15) = 2805000
Now consider your "effective" tax rate:

    You got paid: 3300000 ARS (fair market value)

    Government rate: (3300000 - 1105000) / 3300000 = 0.66
    Unofficial rate: (3300000 - 2805000) / 3300000 = 0.15
Note that it's before you consider future devaluation of peso. For tax purposes you can say you received 3.3M ARS, but just keep it as 10k USD. Then your effective "government cut" rate over the years could very well be in 90% territory if you do the stupid thing and hold pesos.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#109

Post by elcamino44 »

colesantiago wrote: post #73
datadata wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what the arguments you are making sound like to me: One single failure on an airplane can kill hundreds of people, even a single line of code could crash several planes. There are just thousands of accidents waiting to happen. Planes do not work. They have had a hundred years to make planes perfectly safe. Every year more and more people fly. It is a system designed to fail.

The main difference you're not getting is that there is accountability and regulations for when these issues happen, Crypto has none of these and it has been over 15 years in its existence. Crypto is a lawless 'decentralised' wild west that has zero accountability for when anyone loses their money in smart contract hacks, scams, wallet draining and rugpulls, in all cases your money is gone with no refunds or consumer…

I think a better analogy is the internet. Or phones. By any measure, either of those technologies have unleashed a torrent of scams and fraud, especially in the areas where they are largely unregulated.

Of course, I’d say the benefits of cryptocurrencies are far smaller than the benefits of the internet (it’s pretty hard to compete with connecting almost the entire world into a single instant global network for the first time). But some benefits do exist, and I feel like you’re being wilfully blind if you disagree with that.

Of course, you might feel that the downsides (massively) outweigh the upsides. And that’s fine. Others will disagree.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that crypto is at least decentralized and permissionless enough to not go away any time soon, no matter who wants it gone.

Re: Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

#110

Post by pjc50 »

sneak wrote: post #44
gitgud wrote: post #41

To be specific they're allowing transfer to the USDC token, which is a "stable coin" pegged to the USD currency and owned by coin base. This is a fairly low risk move by Stripe, as USDC is more open and trusted than USDT (Tether)

Issued by Coinbase. It is owned by whoever has it. They are also easily and instantly (and perhaps most importantly permissionlessly) exchangeable to hundreds of other tokens thanks to DeFi swap smart contracts.

I think what people are pointing out is that "permissionless" is a function of the legal environment, not the technology. If you "permissionlessly" send some pseudo-dollars to Iran you're relying on your opsec and lack of enforcement, rather than the permission which you didn't get.
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