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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

The problem crypto has is simple: You can't pay your rent in crypto, and you can't earn crypto as salary. So you need an intermediate to convert it to/from fiat. And you need to keep using fiat. Therefore you need a way to convert.

The most decentralised is something like localbitcoins, but for most people its too much hassle. It's like selling a second hand car type process (which most people hate) just to get cash to spend. Therefore a centralised bank it much more preferable.

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There are a bunch of companies that pay in cryptocurrencies

Is there a single company outside of the cryptocurrencies industry that pays in cryptocurrencies?

Yup. I've heard buffer for one does it.

Thanks, but Buffer used to pay 5% of one single employee’s salary in bitcoins [1], and that employee has switched jobs since the annoucement. [2]

[1]: https://open.buffer.com/getting-paid-in-bitcoin/

[2]: https://twitter.com/nieldlr

1. Pay employee in Bitcoins 2. Bitcoin bubble 3. Employee retires

What about this. Fill in the blank:

1. Pay employee in Venezuelan bolívar 2. Bolívar inflates to the point where a month's salary gets you a chicken bone 3. Employee __________

Damn. Well there are probably others :) but I'm not going to do the research.

True but most people can expect to be paid in fiat. And by most I mean 99.99999%

There are 22 million companies just in the US. Can you name 1,000 companies in the US that pay in crypto? I'd be willing to call 0.004% "a bunch".

Obviously 1000 is a bit more than the grandparent can 'name' directly, but I would in fact like to see some evidence indicating the presence of at least 1000 US companies that pay in crypto.

Probably possible with data mining. Find "salary like" amounts send on a regular basis on the B.C. If to/from addresses differ then you are looking for the same amount each month (fiat) across all addresses.

Hell, I would love to know about one. I’m sure they exist somewhere and I would love to know more about the logistics of it.

Coinbase itself gives the option of taking salary in crypto.

It's a bunch in my definition, which is already more than "can't earn a salary in cryptocurrencies"

They are still very rare for now

Can we stop using the term "fiat" to refer to government-issued money? The important feature of fiat currencies is that they're backed by nothing. The fact that fiat currencies are normally government-issued is incidental. The term exists to contrast them with representative currencies. The same goes for most cryptocurrency: it's not backed by anything and only has value because most people agree it has value. Bitcoin is a kind of fiat currency, or at least it's closer to fiat money than it is to anything else.

According to Wikipedia you are correct. But I think you are fighting a losing battle in the crypto space where people take Fiat to mean government backed currencies.

I think of it this way especially as Fiat means 'by decree' or something like that.

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