Humans.net, a recruitment platform, performed a survey and concluded that 29% of interviewed freelancers are interested in getting paid in cryptocurrencies instead of banks and legacy systems. This covered freelancers from the US, 1,100 participants. 18% want all their payments to come in cryptocurrencies and 11% want to receive a part of the payments in digital assets.
Study respondents were selected at random from the US freelance markets. Before the survey took place, none of the respondents showed particular crypto interests.
Why Do The Freelancers Want To Use Cryptocurrencies?
Most freelancers work for companies that have their headquarters overseas. Because of this, cross-border payments are often made. Unfortunately, there are only limited options available for the freelancers that want to receive compensation. The most common options used these days are bank wire transfers, Paypal payments and Western Union.
Transfer Wise is nowadays the most efficient of all the payment systems available for freelancers since bank wire transfers are cleared with really small transaction fees. However, this is an option that can only be practical in those countries that have really stricta capital controls. For instance, in South Korea you cannot transfer over $20,000 per year or $1,000 per day.
Western Union and Paypal both charge high conversion fees, normally between 5 and 10 percent. Paying $250 as transaction fee for every single $5,000 received is considered to be really high. Paypal will charge a flat fee of $0.3 and 2.9% for every transaction in the US. In other locations fees can be higher.
The major cryptocurrencies are allowing the freelancers to almost instantaneously receive payments with minimum fees. This is especially the case with the larger payments. Processing smaller payments is easy with legacy systems. However, when payment size goes over $10,000, rigorous verification and document checking are needed.
Binance sent $600 million with a fee of just $7 on November 17. If you are to use Paypal this would be impossible but even if you could, the fee would be around $30 million.
Why Is Crypto Not Used?
Unfortunately, cryptocurrency adoption in the freelance world is not at all at the level that it should be for freelancers to receive crypto payments. Merchant adoption is still low. You cannot spend Bitcoin at your favorite restaurants, stores and shops. Bitcoin still needs to be cashed out to fiat currency in order to cover necessities and expenses.
