The Internet Archive To Pay Salaries Partly In Bitcoin, Requests Donations

hypnosec writes "Bitcoin is gaining popularity among mainstream sites lately and the latest to adopt the digital currency as a medium of donations and payments is the Internet Archive. Ready to accept donation in the form of Bitcoin, the Internet Archive announced that it wants to do so to pay some part of employees' salaries, if they choose to, in Bitcoin. The Archive, known for its storage of digital documents (especially the previous version of webpages), is looking to start part salary payments in Bitcoin by April 2013 if everything goes well."

Comments

I'd quit

[Anonymous Coward]

The day my employer tells me I'm getting paid in Itchy and Scratch money is the day I stop working for them.

Re:I'd quit

[AK Marc]

Sure, but I'd prefer to not be paid in corn futures either, though those can be converted.

Re:I'd quit

[AK Marc]

No, I want to be paid in Euros. Despite all the US jokes about the Euro about to collapse (OMFG, one of 17 countries has a debt ratio worse than the US, the entire continent is about to collapse), the Euro is in much better shape than the US, where not only is the fed on the brink of collapse, but most of the states, and most citizens of those states as well.

What I can't figure out is the "fiat" loons here love bitcoin, despite it being the most fiat currency ever conceived (aside from joke coinage, like mining company chits and other worker abuses before unions saved us all, which are also defended by "fiat loons").

Re:I'd quit

[Darinbob]

It is not as good as USD because you can't use it to pay for anything except amongst a tiny group of people. Maybe it has value like any other barter item but so do collectible figurines, so good luck trying to pay your for your meal or mortgage with them.

Re:I'd quit

[jonbryce]

If its value in Dollars can double in a month, it can half in a month.

Or put it another way, if you think it is going to continue to rise in value, would you sign a rental agreement payable in Bitcoin?

Re:I'd quit

[pla]

Anyone with bitcoins knows that they need real money as well. So any bitloon would also have some other way to pay, or they aren't eating tonight.

Anyone with an oil field knows they need real money as well.
Anyone with cattle knows they need real money as well.
Anyone with gold knows they need real money as well.
Anyone with a silo full of corn knows they need real money as well.

Anyone with "real money" can't eat it.
Anyone with "real money" knows they need GBP (when they visit the UK).
Anyone with "real money" can't put it in their gas tank (though I suppose you could burn it for heat).

Use of one currency doesn't preclude the use of others. Bitcoin, whether the haters gonna hate or not, has become the preferred online currency for small-scale international transactions between people whose governments have silly archaic rules about sending "real" money into or out of the country (ie, all of them). Case in point, try sending $50 to a friend in a country that doesn't use your native currency. You can expect to nearly double that in the various fees you'll need to pay to do it legally and safely (by which I mean not stuffing an envelope with bills and praying you can trust the postal service in both countries).

"Real money" has exactly one required use - Paying your annual government extortion bill. For everything else, you can use whatever the hell both sides of the transaction agree upon. Corn, wine, oil, gold, frankincense, myrrh, BTC. All good, so long as both sides agree.

Re:I'd quit

[betterunixthanunix]

You buy bitcoins with your USD

Ah, the transaction costs we all love.

magically send them over the Interwebs

"Magic" is an apt description of most pro-Bitcoin arguments.

they then get converted back to USD

Which may or may not be anything remotely near what you put in in the first place, due to the high volatility and utter lack of any guarantee about convertibility. I guess a system run on "magic" would have these properties.

Unlike bank transfer, the whole process only take a few minutes

Credit card transactions take seconds.

it cost nothing

False.

is anonymous

This was repeatedly shown to be false.

just like cash in your wallet.

Except that Bitcoin cannot be used for secure offline payments, the way cash can. Oh, what, you think that digital cash is always online? Think again:

http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf

When I first read the Bitcoin paper, I was shocked by the lack of background research it presented. No mention of Chaum's work at all. No mention of previously developed or deployed digital cash systems. This seems to be the MO of the Bitcoin community: lack of background research. Why should we take you people seriously if you have not even bothered to read papers that can be found in minutes just by reading overview articles on Wikipedia?

Therefore during the 21st century, USD will become a toy currency popular among old peoples and irrelevant to everyone else

Not even remotely accurate. Unless you think the US government is going to stop demanding tax payments made in USD, the overwhelming majority of American adults will require USD. The added overhead of Bitcoin, the added risk and volatility will keep it an obscure anarchist toy compared to USD.

Re:tax evasion?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way everybody else does:
- Employer says "I'm paying this much in cash/Bitcoins which has a value of $X USD."
- Employer deducts taxes
- Employee says "I just got paid this much in cash/Bitcoins which has a value of $X USD."
- Employee files taxes.

WOW THIS POST DESERVES A DOCTORATE IN ECONOMICS

genius

[shentino]

Well that's a genius move to getting government attention.

Get bitcoin mixed up with payroll and the IRS is sure to take interest with regards to income taxes.

This is going to get interesting very fast.

Re:Don't confuse exchange with speculation

[TheRaven64]

Everyone who uses Bitcoin is a currency speculator. You can't buy everyday essentials with it, so you have to turn it back into money that your grocer accepts to do so. If you're keeping the bitcoins and not exchanging them for useful commodities (food, shelter, shiny toys, whatever), you're gambling that they will increase in value over time. The current situation with Bitcoin is that a large number of people are making the same gamble. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right up until the point when a large number of them decide to cash out. You might want to read up on the stock market in the late 1920s for a nice historical example of this happening...

On the other hand, if you're selling it immediately, then you're telling the market that you don't trust it as a long-term store of wealth and this contributes to the volatility. And if you don't think this is problematic, then consider what would happen if the value of your monthly, or even weekly, paycheque varied by 50% every week. Or even more. If you get paid on Friday, but on Thursday don't know whether you'll be paid $1000 or $500 (or $50), how financially secure will you be? How will it affect the rest of the economy if everyone has such variable incomes that they hoard some other store of value (e.g gold, land, or even US dollars) to hedge against a possible crash?