Is the USA ready for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin as workplace compensation

Cryptocurrencies are immensely popular right now. However, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, a survey earlier in the year had found that around 84% of U.S adults were either not interested or hadn’t heard of digital assets.

At the time, participants mainly thought of it as a “speculative” asset class, one bound to fade in the coming year. Well, fast forward to September 2021 and there has been a paradigm shift in perspectives.

“Pay me in crypto!”

Research and survey firm Skynova recently published a survey to highlight

the aforementioned shift in perspectives. The same incorporated more than 1,000 working professionals, including 797 employees and 205 managers. It was conducted to look into how Americans perceived Bitcoin & altcoins for workplace compensation.

65.5% of the respondents said they would be at least somewhat willing to receive compensation in cryptocurrencies, with just over 28% even classifying themselves as “very willing.” Meanwhile, around 63% of millennials view

compensation in crypto as a perk.

However, 9.9% are completely opposed to the idea of their employers starting to offer salaries in crypto.

In another segment, almost a third of the respondents said that they would quit their current job to pursue another that offered compensation in crypto. On the flip side, 42.2% said they would quit if their current employer started doing so.

Looking into the specifics

When questioned on which crypto they would like to see on their paychecks, a majority of the respondents (74.3%) voted for Bitcoin, followed by Ethereum (32.9%), and Dogecoin (26.5%).

However, around 12% said ‘None’.

What’s driving this growing inclination to be paid in crypto though? Well, 45.5% of those who answered in the affirmative believe crypto is the future of currency. Other motivations include the potential for financial gains (41.3%) and the diversification of income (38.8%).

There are some drawbacks of crypto-compensation too. While answering in the negative, respondents cited reasons such as market volatility (55.3%), the potential for financial losses (50.2%), and limited acceptance (44%).

In addition to this, more than 200 of the respondents were managers, often in charge of hiring and compensation decisions. The report added,

“Managers were actually more likely to be very willing to pay employees in crypto than employees were to receive it. This is in spite of the fact that managers who have already paid employees in Bitcoins ultimately paid 45% more, on average, than if the payment had been in USD and in spite of the fact that only 26.3% of managers said they fully understood the legal implications of compensating employees this way.”

 

From the aforementioned data points, it is pretty clear that perspectives about cryptocurrency have changed greatly. It has gone from simply a ‘speculative’ tool to serious discussions about compensations and asset classes.