I actually once offered some guy in India $100 to summarize a list of articles of for me. Sending the money internationally was by far the biggest pain point. So yeah, cryptocurrency could be the key ingredient that makes this idea work.
Sending money internationally is very easy. Sending money to countries with capital controls is a hustle.
It’s easy, but leaky in terms of fees and delays as compared to US-to-US transfers. When I send money to EU hobbyists, it’s often 3 days and ~10% eaten up by fees.
There are gateways like PayPal (which is why it skyrocketed in the first place). So you send $100 PayPal and he gets $100. He then goes and spend his full money to buy something online without any other fees.
The problem is most people have a bank account in their local currency, so PayPal is in their local currency and takes several bites at the apple before passing the core to the recipient.
People doing an hour of work online for a few bucks are likely interested in buying something locally rather than spending $100US on something online.
Transferwise is pretty good. Costs are like 1%, goes direct to their bank account, including India, Indonesia etc. It's more like a bank wire with no charegebacks than Paypal, for better or worse.
PayPal now takes $3-5 minimum on international transfers. Switched to payoneer