The Secret History of Bitcoin: People Who Are Willing to Get Salaries in Bitcoin

Source: Hashpai

Author: LucyCheng

In the previous article "Follow-up to the Bitcoin Pizza Incident | The Secret History of Bitcoin", we mentioned Jeremy Sturdivant. This engineer who helped Laszlo buy pizza and received 10,000 bitcoins should be one of the earliest cryptocurrency enthusiasts to accept Bitcoin as a salary payment method.

From Jeremy's sharing, we know that he chose cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and even Dogecoin as the means of settlement when completing independent contracts as early as around 2011. He said that after receiving Bitcoin from Laszlo, he has been using it as legal tender; and to some extent, he still uses Bitcoin in his daily life.

Jeremy Sturdivant, who helped Laszlo buy two pizzas and received 10,000 bitcoins (Photo source: Internet)

Like Jeremy, Tony Vaughn, the police chief of Vicoo, Kentucky, also regarded Bitcoin as legal tender and offered to receive his salary in Bitcoin. In 2013, as the price of Bitcoin gradually approached the $1,000 mark, its frequency of being reported in the newspapers gradually increased. Tony, who learned about Bitcoin from the news at the time, took the initiative to ask his superiors to receive his salary in Bitcoin. Miraculously, this small town with less than 300 permanent residents actually agreed to Tony's request; and announced that starting from 2014, the salary would be converted into a corresponding number of Bitcoins and remitted to his address in proportion.

In this way, the town of Vicco became the first example of a government entity using digital currency to pay salaries. Later, when Tony was interviewed, he excitedly said, "This is the first time for the town of Vicco (to make the front page headlines)." It is also worth mentioning that the town's exposure attracted a certain amount of donations, and the city's gay mayor Johnny Cummings also made an appearance at the "Colbert Report" conference in August of that year.

Tony Vaughn, the police chief of the small town of Vicco, Kentucky (Photo source: Internet)

Later, as Bitcoin awareness increased and its price continued to rise, the number of companies and employees using and willing to accept Bitcoin as a salary payment method increased significantly from late 2017. In January 2018, Japanese Internet service provider GMO Internet announced that it would use Bitcoin to pay the salaries of more than 4,000 employees starting in February; in April, the Danish ice hockey team also began to accept Bitcoin as a salary payment method; in addition to these large institutions, in the Italian town of Rovereto, which has a large number of heavy BTC users, a bar owner Gianpaolo Rossi also said that he would use Bitcoin to pay employees' salaries.

According to a survey conducted by Chronobank in September of that year, 66% of cryptocurrency enthusiasts said that they strongly hope that their employers will adapt to the times and pay them part or all of their wages in the form of Bitcoin or other digital currencies. 88% of them said that they are very happy to accept bonuses paid in Bitcoin. But what is more interesting is the reason why these enthusiasts are willing to accept Bitcoin payments. More than half of the respondents believe that getting paid in cryptocurrency will help them reduce their daily expenses.

Image source: Internet

Accepting Bitcoin as a method of salary payment is a recognition of Bitcoin and a good experiment; however, since the market entered a bear market, there seems to be less talk about using Bitcoin to pay salaries.

Link to this article: https://www.8btc.com/media/578480
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