Has anyone approached oDesk, freelancer.com or any of the other similar websites about adding Bitcoin to their method of payment? Would be a great tool for all of these sites.
Have you ever read any of their ToS or Privacy Policies? Most of them keep a fractional reserve of your funds and collect interest on your funds from the bank, not to mention their tendency to scam. I myself have lost about 2,000$ to scamming by a company which I shall not name (starts with F), after someone has paid me for a job, clearly said that he was happy with it in the chats, then called up his credit card company and they reversed the payment which led said company to not only put my balance into a negative but actually take the money from other freelancers which I employed with said money. When I inquired about the info of said scammer they weren't willing to give that out.
In general I don't think that it would be beneficial to Bitcoin, we have plenty of scammers already, don't need new ones.
(And F you, you scamming companies)Well you would obviously need to trust any company like this that you are doing work for/through. I wouldn't think that any company like this would engage in fractional reserves as they are not a lending institution so there would be very little reason for them to not have all of the funds that would be owed to you upon completion of your work (the only exception to this would be if the free lance company were to trust the client enough to not make them pay upfront).
I don't think we would see a lot of scams from companies not paying for work provided as this is a very serious crime that is generally prosecuted by law enforcement, and it would be easy to prove if you were paid or not
17. Funds
You may have funds in your Account if you have prepaid for fees or charges or for services to be provided to you via the Website. If you are a Seller, you may have funds if you have successfully completed a Project, or sold an item, and funds have been released to you. There are also circumstances where funds will have been credited to your Account in relation to an affiliate program or a referral program.
Funds in your Account are held by us in our operating accounts held with reputable financial institutions. Funds in your Account are not held separately by us and may be commingled with our general operating funds and funds of other User's Accounts.
You are not entitled to any interest, or other earnings for funds that are in your Account.
We may receive interest on funds held by us in our operating accounts (which may include funds in your Account) from financial institutions with whom we hold our operating accounts. Any such interest earned belongs to us and we will not be liable to any User for any imputed interest on such funds.
If your Account has a negative amount of funds, we may:
set-off the negative amount of funds with funds that you subsequently receive into your Account;
if you have funds in multiple currencies in your Account and one of the currencies becomes negative for any reason, we may set-off the negative amount against funds you maintain in a different currency balance (at an exchange rate applied by us);
reverse payments you have made from your Account to other User Accounts on the Website;
deduct amounts you owe us from money you subsequently add or receive into your Account; or
immediately suspend or limit your Account until such time as your Account no longer has a negative amount.
In the event that we offset a negative amount of funds pursuant to this section, it may be bundled with another debit coming out of your Account.
We reserve the right to collect any funds owed to us by any other legal means.
You acknowledge and agree that:
we are not a bank or other licensed financial institution and do not provide banking services or any financial services to you;
the funds shown in your Account (which may include Milestone Payments and/or any prepayment of fees and charges which you owe to us) represents our unsecured obligations to you with respect to your rights to direct us to make payment in relation to the purchase and sale of Seller Services through the Website and provision of the Freelancer Services;
to the extent that we are required to release funds from your Account to you, you will become our unsecured creditor until such funds are paid to you;
we are not acting as a trustee or fiduciary with respect to such funds or payments;
the amount of funds showing in your Account is not insured and is not a guaranteed deposit;
funds may only loaded into your Account, or released from your Account, by us and you must only use the mechanisms available on the Website to pay for, or receive funds in respect of Seller Services;
we will hold funds in respect of the amount of your Account (including Milestone Payments) in an account held by us with a financial institution (or in any manner that we decide in our sole discretion from time to time) and such funds are not segregated into a separate account; and
we may commingle your funds with funds of other User's and our own funds and such commingled funds could be used to pay other Users or for our general corporate purposes or otherwise, however, we will remain obliged to release or refund funds at your direction in accordance with this User Agreement.
Sure sounds like they are holding your funds in a fractional reserve while collecting interest on your cash.
The company itself doesn't scam you directly in the sense that they refuse to let you withdraw etc. They scam you in a sense that they put you in a vulnerable position where you get your funds stolen and then refuse to give away the information of the scammer due to their privacy policy. If I have a business which allows some of my customers to steal freely from my other customers while I cover up for the scamming customers without making the risks clear then I am a scammer by definition:
Definition of SCAMMER. a dishonest person who uses clever means to cheat others out of something of value
This is the very reason why I started the first honest freelancing website, it's the first honest financial website connected to the internet as far as I'm concerned.