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Comment by aspenmayer | Hacker News Reader

That just gave me an idea. What if it were the norm to be paid in cryptocoins linked to the value of the company you worked for? So instead of making 100K a year, you made 100 AnyCorpCoins, which the company's internal payroll exchange or any compatible cryptoexchange will change for dollars happily? The company could peg the coins at their own employee-only values to prevent major market fluctuations from devaluing your salary, and it allows employees and non-employees to earn stake in the company simply by holding the coins. Thoughts?

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What if it were the norm to be paid in company scrip with no meaningful value to anybody outside the company?

Why is it that engineering types don't pay the least attention to history...? Why is it that engineering types think that sprinkling crypto on it solves a single meaningful social ill? Hiding the scrip behind "crypto" does nothing. Who's going to take your FacebookForCatsCoin when they could have actual money instead? A random speculator? Meanwhile, who's gonna take dollars?

Jeez.

I'm not advocating for this, but it is an interesting thought experiment. I do share your concerns, but I feel that this kind of thing is likely inevitable with the rise of ICOs and cryptocurrency futures trading. Capital flows will make a market of it somehow, even if it's only quants and AIs who are able to operate such a market in meaningful, value-adding ways.

I'm gonna be straight with you: it's an interesting thought experiment if you ignore the entirety of the history of the industrialized world. If you don't ignore it, it's not even novel.

ICOs are valueless trash in ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of all cases. This will only change, maybe-if-you're-lucky, if they are securitized and regulated, at which point it's the new "oh but stock!", and it's still not going to be a sane deal for a worker because the worker has no real way to deal with either counterparty risk of exchanges (meanwhile, dollars involve no such risk) short of paying a vig--you know, like how companies pay poor employees on debit cards with fees, how's that reality sound for everybody?--or safety of exchange rate, because LOL your company has a bad quarter and now you can't pay your rent because FacebookForCatsCoin no longer makes the speculators, the only people who are paying attention to it, sufficiently money-horny.

Sprinkling crypto on company scrip doesn't make it anything other than company scrip. And it's a bad idea for companies, too, because a mere, what, ninety-nine percent of companies have no public stock and would very much like to keep it that way?

They are not any more or less valueless trash than most fiat currencies, which are stand-ins for the value of assets held and traded in said fiat currency. If the tokens you were paid in have excess utility generated with their production like filecoin for example, I would be more likely to consider it as a means of payment, but not necessarily as a store of value. I don't think you're wrong to frame it as company scrip, but if your company scrip was traded on Coinbase, you might not be so dismissive of the mere concept. Not saying I'd choose to be paid in it, either.

“You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store”

What if it were the norm to be paid in cryptocoins linked to the value of the company you worked for?

Well, it's usually the norm for employees to be paid enough to get food, clothing and shelter. In your norm, this normal might not hold. Perhaps employees would be so upset in this case they'd form a union - or maybe just quit in en mass.

That's just shares isn't it?

Imagine 100 employees having 100 coins each, and then the company tanks. No thanks..

Can the company tell how many you have, and draw conclusions about how committed you are?

I think this is being paid in stock options. Many people choose to mix stock, options, and cash in compensation.

I guess I'm thinking of a periodical rolling ICO with employees being able to buy in early, often, and at a discount.

Isn't this equity and stock shares, without the extra conversion step?

Basically sounds like some class of shares in a corporation?

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