Why the P2P Foundation pays salaries in Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

Why the P2P Foundation pays salaries in Bitcoin

blog.p2pfoundation.net

23 pointsstuhood12 comments

I am still wondering why Bitcon has not created a scheme for user-friendly addresses. Remembering something like 19HcFgnnJseANJAHUjFifVwz68AGYrHc7v is way harder than Donate.P2PF or something like that. I think there is a URL service that offers a personalized handle, but implementing a better solution in the Bitcoin codebase shouldn't be so hard.

It is hard. Very hard.

A bitcoin address is basically the hash of a public key. It's trivial to prove that you are the owner of the address.

Once you use names instead of addresses you need a mapping of names to addresses. Who owns a name? Who determines to which address a name maps?

The namecoin project is currently trying to solve this problem (and doing exactly what you suggested), but there are still lots of potential issues.

There is an interesting scheme called 'firstbits', which uses the blockchain (global, public, immutable) to determine the shortest prefix which uniquely identifies an address. At this point in time, an address can usually be identified with 5-6 hex digits.

Your 19HcFgnnJseANJAHUjFifVwz68AGYrHc7v address for example, firstbits down to 19HcFgn: http://firstbits.com/

Sorry... not hex: base64 (or whatever the bitcoin variant is.)

I am the guy who got paid, AMA (seriously)

Was the amount you were to be paid specified in bitcoins or in some other currency at the conversion rate on the day you were paid?

The honorary was agreed in Euros before starting my employment. When I was asked for the first invoice I included my Btc address, and wrote an email requesting to be paid in Bitcoin. The reception to the idea was so enthusiastic, including ending up writing a blog post about it (which I co-wrote). An account was created in one of the exchanges and the Btc were bought at market price, after which they were transferred to my Btc address.

Thanks. So from the sound of this, rather than being paid with a fixed amount of bitcoins (treating it as a currency), you were paid with a fixed amount of Euros (treating it as a currency) and it was transferred using bitcoins (treating it as a financial instrument).

This satisfies my curiosity: I have seen uses of bitcoins as a financial instrument (although this is the first time I've heard of it being used for salary payments), but I have yet to see it used as a currency (except for speculators).

Did you covert the btc's to another currency already or will you hold onto them for a while?

You better convert it to $ fast. Otherwise, you many not have been paid as much as you earned.

Or depending on market conditions the exchange rate could move in your favor and those bitcoins can buy much more than what they could on the day they were earned.

Schrute Bucks would've been my choice. /sarcasm

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