Twitter Inc.’s finance chief said the social-media company has thought about how it might pay employees or vendors using the popular cryptocurrency bitcoin....“We’ve done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor if they ask to be [paid] in bitcoin and whether we need to have bitcoin on our balance sheet should that happen,” Mr. Segal said.
This is nuts. What if an employee asks to be paid in pork belly futures? What if a vendor wants to be paid in gold nuggets?
The answer, of course, is that Twitter should give them dollars, which they are then free to convert into pork bellies or Krugerrands at their leisure. Ditto for bitcoin, except for the fact that bitcoin is totally awesome so CFOs like to mention it on TV in hopes that some of its awesomeness will rub off on them. Or maybe just to keep their boss the bitcoin fan happy. Or something.
Someone such as Kevin (not me) should actually buy some bitcoin and then immediately resell it to see if they get what they paid for it, or even the supposed current price.
Just for you:
I purchased 0.00214858 BTC for $100, of which $3.84 went to fees, so I had $96.16 of BTC at the time. I turned around and sold it a minute later at $95.19, of which $2.99 went to fees, so I ended up with $92.20.
The difference between the buy amount and the sell amount is a combination of the buy/sell differential of the exchange (Coinbase, in this case) and the movement of the currency, which I wasn't paying attention to during the transactions so I don't know which way it was moving at the time (it's been trending generally downward today).
You owe me a venti caffe mocha.
A small tax on bitcoin mining?
The amount of electricity used to "mine" the bitcoin is huge--and very wasteful.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/bitcoin-btc-surge-renews-worries-about-its-massive-carbon-footprint.html
Of course I can't compare it to the Wall Street firms and the energy needed to maintain their bot armies ready to buy/sell on the slightest moves.
And as the upper limit of Bitcoins is approached, the more power is required. It's insane how wasteful this is.
Is bitcoin mining the goldbug variation on large scale marijuana grow operations & meth labs, in terms of energy suck & environmental degradation?
If you ever look at the entire species and its "economy", your mind is going to be blown.
i think i'd rather be paid in pork-belly futures. that way i can literally bring home the bacon.
You'd need to have a portable smoker in your car.
EL SCORCHING HOT TAEK.
In the late 90s I was paid in Beanie Babies. Worked out great.
When was it that restaurants & bars accepting payment in bitcoin was in the news? 2013?
Honestly wish it would have burnt out by now.
I wonder how income tax would work if you were paid in Bitcoin. Would your income be what the Bitcoin was worth on the day you were paid? Seems like an accounting nightmare.
If you earn money in foreign currency, you have to convert it to USD using either:
(1) the conversion rate at each moment when you received foreign currency - so for example, if you received biweekly paychecks, you'd multiply each one of the 26 payments by a published conversion rate on each date you got paid and then add them all up (and specify later on in your return which site you used for getting daily exchange rates) OR
(2) the average exchange rate between that currency and USD over the entire tax (calendar) year, as determined by the IRS on this chart https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/yearly-average-currency-exchange-rates
I had to do this when I lived in Canada in 2011 and chose method 2 because it's much easier than method 1. So I imagine that someone getting paid in Bitcoin will need to do the same process, except that since Bitcoin isn't on the chart yet, method 2 will not be an option.
I used to see article after article on What You Need To Know To Invest In Bitcoin.
(When To Get Out.)
This sounds a bit like Enron conning all their employees to have 100% of their 401Ks in company stock.
Don't know about pork bellies, but back in the eighties Boeing was selling jetliners to eastern Europe and taking partial payments in ham. I was working for a Boeing vendor and received a ham as a good will gesture. Management considered it a bonus and didn't take the cost of the ham out of our wages (although I bet they thought about it).
Was it an Eastern European ham?
Pretty sure Romania & the former Yugoslavia paid in cabbage.
Hungary paid in paprika.
Normally as an older human I find myself in agreement with Kevin. But here, I have to disagree. I've studied the pros and cons of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for four years and I think, through all the noise and static, that there's a core element there that's intriguing and worth pursuing. They aren't going to become some absurd single world currency, but there are intriguing use cases. What if two people in different parts of the world could conduct a transaction without having to worry about currency exchange rates, external payment processors, the buyer writing a bad check or otherwise trying to get out of paying, etc. Now, don't get me wrong, 99% of cryptocurrencies have zero use, but there are some that do matter. Bitcoin is one, Ethereum is another.
Except the exchange rate into local currency, allowing use for non-dark web transactions.
"What if two people in different parts of the world could conduct a transaction without having to worry about currency exchange rates..."
Bitcoin doesn't solve this problem. It just replaces "exchange rate of dollars to pounds" with "exchange rate of dollars to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to pounds."
"...external payment processors..."
Bitcoin doesn't solve this problem unless you have the expertise to process a Bitcoin transaction yourself. Most people don't, and it would be a waste of their time to learn.
"...the buyer writing a bad check or otherwise trying to get out of paying..."
Bitcoin does not solve this problem. Someone still has to go first: Either the buyer pays first (and the seller might not send the product), or the seller ships first (and the buyer might not send the money).