Six Benefits of Earning And Getting Paid In Crypto
Cryptocurrencies offer more than a new way to transfer money online. Blockchain is a whole financial ecosystem of its own, with different rules and different norms. Thanks to the unique nature and opportunities of the space, earning and getting paid in crypto comes with numerous advantages.
Money – but different
For those used to paying or getting paid with a card or online bank transfer, using crypto can feel like living in a foreign country – needing to do things differently, familiarising themselves with a new set of rules, and learning new ideas and even language.
But sending and receiving crypto is actually not so different to the way we used to do things, back in the days when we used physical cash for almost everything. The difference is that, because crypto is digital, it’s really ‘e-cash’: the best of both online and offline worlds.
As digital money, crypto offers a number of intrinsic advantages, including low-cost, borderless payments, financial privacy, security, and the benefits of using a form of cash that lies outside of the influence of any single nation or financial institution.
When it comes to getting paid in crypto for work, or earning it in various other ways, there are particular reasons to explore these new technologies and payment systems in greater depth.
Work, stake, lend, farm
There are many different ways you might end up getting paid in crypto. Employers are increasingly offering crypto payments as an option, especially if you work in the gig economy. You may choose to be proactive in using your work as a chance to earn crypto, signing up for a crypto freelancing platform like LaborX, or integrating crypto payments on your website in return for goods you sell as an online merchant.
There are also plenty of opportunities within the blockchain and DeFi world to earn crypto, putting existing funds to work by staking them (as you can do with SOL on Solana, ETH on Ethereum 2.0, or TIME with TimeWarp), lending them out for a return on a centralised platform (Nexo, BlockFi, Celsius) or decentralised protocol (Aave, Compound), or using them for providing liquidity on a DEX like Uniswap.
Here are six benefits for those fortunate or forward-thinking enough to earn crypto.
1. Get paid by anyone, from anywhere
Accepting crypto for payment means you can work for anyone, anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you live, or where in the world your employer is based. So long as you both have an internet connection, crypto payments will work. What’s more, while crypto can be used to transfer millions of dollars securely, it can also be efficient even for very small amounts of money, right down to a few dollars – which is not the case with banks and conventional money transfer services. What that means in practice is that you can access more opportunities, and different types of work.
2. Get paid without using a bank account
For the (surprisingly large) percentage of the world who are unbanked or underbanked, crypto offers an alternative form of financial infrastructure. Even if you do have a bank account, it can still be horrendously expensive to move money across borders, due to various transfer fees and extortionate exchange rates. With crypto, everyone is treated equally.
3. Avoid chargebacks
A further advantage, particularly for those who sell goods and services online, is the issue of chargebacks. Conventional ecommerce merchants frequently have problems with chargebacks – where a customer makes a payment using a credit card, receives the item they ordered, then has the payment processor reverse the transaction by claiming it was made fraudulently. The merchant sends the goods and loses the payment. Thanks to the way blockchains work, once a transaction has been made, it cannot be reversed – effectively solving this problem.
4. Find effective new ways to earn
The blockchain sector has generated tremendous innovation, spawning whole new economic models and means of earning. For example, adding crypto-economic principles to games has led to the rise of the play-to-earn (P2E) phenomenon. Players, especially those in lower-income countries, can make a significant income by playing their favourite titles. The Metaverse offers further opportunities to put skills to work online, and convert spare time into real cash.
5. Help secure the network and generate passive income
If you own a crypto that can be staked, such as ETH, SOL, ADA, and many others, you not only earn a return on that (typically anything from 5-10% annually). You also help secure the network – protecting the value of your own investment, and everyone else’s. This is a great option if you’ve earned funds from a job in one of these cryptos, because you can then put it to work to earn a bonus if you don’t immediately need to sell it to pay bills.
6. Be on the right side of history
Lastly, we are now at a watershed in the history of the world and the history of money. The backdrop of pandemic, war, money printing and inflation have shown there is a strong case for crypto: digital assets that cannot be created or controlled by nation states or powerful corporations. Adopting crypto means you’re playing a small but crucial part in growing this new financial infrastructure, nailing your colours to the mast and making it easier for others to do the same after you.
