Topic: Bitcoin Fueling the Gig Economy (Read 543 times)

This is without doubt that today we have many more options than 10 years ago. And trend is towards globalization. But if the states do not accept the crypro, big players in the market will not do that either. From the other side I do not like, the states are trying more and more to control this segment.

As long as a market for the service providers remain for exchanging bitcoin you will be able to do this trick. But as soon as governments begin to impose restrictions on bitcoin trades this will gradually fade away and paypal would come back to its original prime.

I beg to differ here. Skilled workers are generally not good investors and reverse is also true. You have to understand that the society is built by a mixture of all these people. There are investors who dont want to work and make people work for money - humans as resource. So whether they invest in crypto is a big question because that will pull the market up because of their high new worth and average investment amount.

In the last couple of years there has been a massive influx of crypto related influencers on social media monetizing their content to bank on the booming crypto market, and quite a few of them are doing pretty well.

I haven't seen other industries where social media influencers on a larger scale do well. Usually only a few become very large and the rest lags behind to eventually give up because it's no longer worth their time.

Crypto has truly opened the door to people from every part of the world and every financial class. At this stage even those who outside crypto don't stand a chance to make a good living still manage to grow here creating content.

The truth is that technology has become so disruptive that we have not gotten used to it before a new change arrives, and while this can be considered unfair to some it is just the way the economy works and you need to adjust accordingly, business owners will always look for ways to reduce costs, it is up to the worker to find a way to distinguish himself from the rest so he can get a good pay for his efforts, unfortunately many are incapable to do this and they lose their jobs.

I think it is today when the cryptocurrency market shows low positions so many people have the opportunity to get really good experience in the cryptocurrency market.  I also strongly hope that my professionalism will be much higher when the cryptocurrency market begins to recover and my husband to use all his experience to get really good results.

I think that those people who managed to catch the wave, very correctly used the opportunities to achieve success.  I have repeatedly met people who previously had no relation to high technologies, or programming, and even more so to cryptocurrency, but showed quite good results and today are experienced traders, investors and other users of cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies are not the main reason why we have this “gig economy” going on in our world,it has push people especially the millenials to be part of it. People (including me) felt underpaid with their 8 to 5 job that is why they arebforced to look for other modes of revenue and getting paid with their skills through freelancing is one of them. Some people earn even without any kind of skills through blogging or streaming their games, they are literally earning money for every user who watch, subscribe, or donate to them. This "gig economy"" you are referring too might be a big part of any country's economy especially when the next generations will be more involve into tech.

Can confirm, freelancing for people around the world and using bitcoin as a payment method has been a game changer for me over the last few years. I give nice discount for bitcoin payment as opposed to the likes of paypal, and it works like a charm.

Talking about gigs in music is something more professional. I think this topic is more inclined towards those who are trying to make some cash doing freelancer work. Something similar to upwork and so. Now the biggest group of people entering as service providers here are the third world country.

They face a good money value since the dollar is higher price there. I dont know who would want to accept bitcoin there but is locally it is easily trade-able then obviously its demand will be there.

You are not wrong, but again for a lower economic country reisdent even that remaining 14$ is a good amount of cash for a day or two.

exactly. There are too many cases to say that electronic money is not suitable for being a general means of payment. I do not support this because fiat money also benefits countries. The market of fiat money (Forex) is even bigger than the crypto market. It will not be easy to change things.

Considering the economy world has right now and the unemployment at sky high numbers in many parts of the world and people who graduate from college (more than ever in history of earth) can't find jobs at their educated areas and start working in irrelevant jobs or even stay unemployed the fact that freelance getting more and more common is great for people who live in third world countries and can survive on 15 dollars per day vs people who are in first world countries where just the rent is over a thousand dollars who will be screwed even bigger with this.

They need to find jobs and get paid to live there and survive whereas I can do the same job 10 times cheaper so company hires me freelance and that dude is having hard time finding a job. I am telling you even though it helps me a lot, its still sad for others.

What I wonder about are fees. If you order some gig for, let's say, $15, would you be willing to pay more than $1 on top as Bitcoin transaction fee? I always thought that Bitcoin is the least suitable coin for this purpose. Am I wrong?

There are many jobs that cannot be done online so an independent contractor can still get a great pay in the first world and just use the internet to get clients, but if the job can be done remotely then there is only one way for people in the first world to compete, and that is to simply to offer a service of better quality, if you are going to charge more money then you need to justify the greater pay, you could offer better costumer service, better skills, or the option to be physically present some of the time which is something that a person at the other side of the world cannot do.

Anyone who is working on gigs and independent shouldn't be making use of cryptocurrency. The reasons I'm saying this because you can get scammed. Yes that's the truth because I have also worked as a freelancer and I know the kind of problems I faced while working as that. There are some people who will approach you just for them to get free works from you and when you finish working for them, they wouldn't pay you, they just take the work for free and there is nothing you can do about it. So if you want such work, you have to make use of the platforms that are meant for such purposes, cause they are going to be the ones to provide you with escrow services and protect you from getting scammed .

Exactly, and it is more relevant to 3rd world countries where there are higher unemployment figures. There are lots of jobs/gigs in 1st world countries that are not very desirable and normally these tasks are "outsourced" if it can be done in other countries with cheaper labour. 

Work like translation services and scanning and archiving services and also sorting of large amounts of data can be done in other countries and Bitcoin payment is ideal for that, because you can do micro payments for these micro tasks.  

And with the gig economy rising at this day and age comes the never ending pursuit of the tax men for profits. I love that we're moving forward with literally almost every aspect of the economy nowadays but whenever bitcoin excels on something, G-men always ensures that they will screw it up and establish their "dominance" over that certain area where bitcoin is proving its worth. I myself am a freelancer, and I have suggested my clients to pay me with bitcoin instead of the traditional Paypal and bank transfers but they are still wary about the said payment method since they don't know whether they'd be breaking rules by doing so or not. Perhaps until we have some clearly defined regulations on bitcoin we'll see more and more use-cases for it appearing everywhere.

Bitcoin will help facilitate the so called gig economy or its market, usually people used to rely on paypal for these sort of transactions and you really cannot reply on paypal if you are holding a large amount of money as they usually block your account without any warning and if that happens you will hardly hear from their customer support and it will take up to a year to sort the issue which is not an optimal way and with the advent of bitcoin it has taken over the monopoly of these micro payment systems.

The site which facilitates the work will act like an escrow and the irreversible nature of crypto transaction will not increase the risk of scams, with paypal and other payment methods even if you get the amount and you sent the work they proposed, they could arise a despite after sometime which is the biggest scam in the past and to get that money you need to wait for a long time.

Well you have a point. But I think it's possible for certain groups of people in the West to get paid in crypto, for example musicians doing literal gigs. Maybe just ask to get paid in bitcoins instead of cash when playing at a bar, or fixing people's plumbing, etc.

I am a walking proof of this. I last worked a normal job 3 years ago, I had a short 2 month stint somewhere in between but my last decent job was 3 years ago and I can testify that for the past 3 years I have been paid with bitcoin (and to some extend altcoins) because that is an easier method.

In my country you can get paid with paypal as well but then you need to spend it on paypal and can't withdraw it to your bank account, so you end up with a lot of money on your paypal that you need to spend online and can't turn into fiat cash in your hands whereas when you get bitcoins you can get it to your bank account via exchanges and then using ATM can get cash for it too so it makes it that much easier.

I think that what bitcoin does in terms of helping the gig economy is not only just from the aspect of lower transaction fees and not needing to deal with wait times.

These benefits lead to much more in terms of connecting the global labour markets. The barriers of entry for labourers are essentially lowered as a result of BTC as a form of payment, which in the long term can even start bridging the gap in wages between first world and second/third world countries.

People may talk about Paypal as a more integral part of the gig economy, and right now, they may be right. But as more and more disgruntled users see that Paypal's reversibility and policies are a pain in the ass and sometimes unfair, as well as the fact that their exchange rates are complete garbage, they'll turn to alternative means. Also, remember the fact that Paypal verification isn't something that everyone can do, especially with the unbanked. Again, this contributes directly to the barrier of entry that's preventing people from accessing the global labour market in the first place.

AFAIK, Gig economy is really a good thing. Bitcoin is playing a vital role with it now, as well.
However, Paypal is the primary money transfer platform the companies uses for their employee payrolls. For now, labor and employment companies that use bitcoin as the currency is still young and immature. The people especially the professionals did not yet adopt the bitcoin in the gig economy. But, it has been initiated and was also an effective way to pay the employees if they would accept it too. It would be nice to look forward to bitcoin to be used for the gig economy.

Actually in USA there are also many who are into the gig economy or freelancing but of course they are offering higher-priced services as compared to those in developing countries. There are many niches in this industry that when we talk about quality those in the USA can amply provide. Of course, this industry is booming with those in countries with lower standards of living where freelancers are charging "cheap" labor while the buyers of the services are saving lots of money...producing a win-win situation actually. And of course, we are now seeing a slow shift to the use of cryptocurrency instead of the usual PayPal.

People in third world who is doing freelancing will surely cant be compared to western freelancers.Payments are so damn low but because theyre in that country they cant do a thing but to be contended and work hard in order to live.Freelancing can make your life better im telling you no matter where country you are third world or country above all.Knowledge and hardwork paysoff.

People's ignorance is mostly caused by stupid friends who don't know what Bitcoin is. They paint it off as a scam or fraud because their government said so, but without even knowing how Bitcoin works or what it really is.

That's also the main reason I dislike people posting here that India banned Bitcoin recently, while nothing has been confirmed at all. I even read that the central bank has rejected these claims.

Most average people are sheeps--when one says Bitcoin is banned, the rest follows as if that's their only mission in life. The only thing we can do is educate people where possible so that they at least know the other side of the story.

      I'm from a Third World country and you're right freelance worker in the internet are really growing and we are payed maybe not much but quite enough to have decent living in the  country and even better than those people working in the company and it's fueling the countries economy.
     Blockchain technology can help to be more efficient of kind of job.
      

50% of works getting turned towards the independent economy generation completely affects the growth, because even now the competence is high. Using it as a way the works were meant to be done for low profit. However things get regulated this gets functional on vendor and the worker terms. As one of the user mentioned if this continues soon first world countries won't be first world country as such a way of economy boom is found much in those countries than the third world rated countries.

Yes.

This is the reality for freelancers, if the employer is too good enough they would think of those benefits. But if the employer just pass the tasks and let it done for the certain time, pay afterwards then communicate, rinse and repeat, they won't be the one to have that kind of concern unless you address it to them first.

My conclusion, majority of the employers are still not open to pay bitcoin. They still use popular payment processors like PayPal, Transferwise, Xoom, etc.

"Fueling" is way to big word here, because I personally know that Bitcoin freelancing is far smaller now than it was 3 years ago - there's barely any new job offers on sites like XBTfreelancer or in Services board of this forum. Maybe in the future it will change, but for now employers don't see any good reasons to look for workers that can be paid in BTC, and there's too little new Bitcoin businesses that would employ Bitcoin workers. Gig economy is real, and it's growing, and things like Uber or Lyft are also part of gig economy, but Bitcoin doesn't have it's own Uber, and Bitcoin's versions of Upwork don't have even 0.01% of Upwork's volume.

Freelancers in my country used to use paypal.

And for some weird reason which nobody knows, paypal got banned a few years ago here. Freelancers ask about the paypal alternatives in public forums and whenever I see one, I tell him/her about bitcoin.

It is so sad most of them are thick as a brick they don't even want to hear and understand about it. Some smart ones are already using btc and obviously I don't need to tell them about it...

Sometimes people just create their own hell by ignoring the technological developments.

That is the wonder of our digital technology today. You can do a lot of things online now. You don't have to go out of your room just to make a transaction to someone or somebody and talk important matters. And now, with cryptocurrencies on the rise. Many people have already benefitted its advantages with tx speed and fees. The world is changing fast. And we are reaping its benefits.

The domestic "gig economy" in the US looks quite a lot different than Mechanical Turk or this forum. Here it just means transitioning from employment (full-time, benefits included) to independent contractors (project basis, no benefits). Only so much work can be outsourced to low wage countries, especially manual and skilled work.

So we see less taxi drivers and more Uber drivers, less delivery drivers on restaurant payrolls and more DoorDash/UberEats drivers. Lots of coding/debugging work that used to be done in-house is now outsourced on a project basis. These types of things.

It doesn't mean people here are working for crumbs, but it means they are losing medical/retirement benefits, financial reliability, and so on.

I think it's true. Maybe it's not only about Bitcoin but also about the world that keeps changing. People are more connected with each other, information is traveling faster than ever, competition is higher, so things have to get done faster, and largely online. Jobs related to specific short-term projects or simply people doing freelance are getting more popular, and Bitcoin certainly helped to expand the market of such jobs. Moving from company to company, from topic to topic lets people develop different skills and not get bored by routine. And flexibility allows to combine different kinds of activity as well as spend more time with loved ones or on hobbies.

As a freelancer who lives in a third world country i can confirm that bitcoin is probably the best option for anyone like me, since payment methods are limited to where i live i have looked for years about ways to provide my services as a freelancer but the only easy and convenient way i found is cryptocurrency and more specifically bitcoin, and with it becoming more and more popular among the gig due to the fact that it is more profitable to work and get paid in bitcoin which its value goes up rather than jut getting paid with fiat, i ma sure that freelancing for fiat will no longer exist in the future.

The gig economy is a fine way to turn us all into even more cowed slaves than we already are. You can't really build a future on the basis of what it offers. You become ever more dependent on the crumbs they throw at you.

Good for dipping in and out of but that's probably not the end game here. The best thing Bitcoin can do for anyone is to pull them out of the need to participate in the gig economy altogether.

None of the above applies if you're outside first world countries, but soon enough the first world countries won't be first world.

Freelance jobs is growing in time. In our country some people opt to find jobs online rather than apply for a position in a company. It has a lot of benefits since you can earm bettet, create your own rate depending on your skills, manage your time, no boss your own rule, etc.

Blockchain tech can create even more job opportunities to other people.

There are lots of opportunities being offered in Freelancing. It actually decreases the percentage of unemployment rate in our country and surely if it will collaborate with cryptocurrency, things will surely get better and even the growth will go faster. Blockchain will surely be an advantage in the freelancing industry.

There is more than 1 kind of jobs that you can do in freelancing. I'm pretty sure programming or web development is not 'low payment rates'.


He might want to say that because it's irreversible, anyone would be able to request payment and then stop their work, so the employer got scammed. But that case is weak, knowing the risk of crypto beforehand should definitely make you able to avoid a shitty situation like this.

I dont understand why irreversible transactions would increase the risk of scams.    Yes people will have to be more cautious with who they trade. But eventually after transition happens I see only upsides.

@davis

I don't agree with you mr. Maybe in US it is impossible to do freelancing gig as a living where the prices are also not that cheap
 
But if you do live on a third world country exploring blockchain technology can already provide you enough to live(maybe you were trying to define living as a luxurious kind of living)

The "gig economy" means freelancing,right?
I wonder how can people from the western world compete with all the third world freelancers with their extremely low payment rates.It's impossible to do freelancing gig for a living.
Cryptocurrencies won't make the gig economy better due to the irreversible crypto transactions,which increases the risk of scams.

"...the gig economy is fast becoming the main source of employment for people all over the world; facilitated in no small part by the Internet’s ability to connect remote workers with prospective employers. At the time of writing, over a third of Europeans and Americans are working as independent contractors in the gig economy. That number is set to rise to 50% by 2020, and there is now growing pressure on the existing economic infrastructure to keep pace with that rise.

With the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, can the blockchain help facilitate a new form of employment and help workers around the world earn a fair living from their efforts?"

Further Read: https://blockonomi.com/cryptocurrency-gig-economy/

The growing gig economy is firstly facilitated by the birth and massive adoption of internet connectivity anywhere in the globe...this remains to this day an evolving revolution that pole-vault many industries into what they are today. What was previously impossible is now one of the best options for people to work, to study and even to play. The coming of bitcoin 10 years ago put a very important layer on top of the internet hence bitcoin has become the money of the internet greatly enhancing the gig economy as anyone can seamlessly be paid with this currency wherever he/she can be in the globe. Plus the whole cryptocurrency revolution opened up a big can of opportunities to work and do business with crypto-focused fintech companies.