Cryptocurrencies as a form of payment

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hello, people.

An unrelated post started this topic and I decided to create a proper thread to move the conversation forward.

I live in a country (Venezuela) where access to PayPal or bank accounts in USD, Euro or any other stable Fiat currency is not possible, so cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more common among professionals that want better job opportunities and income to keep bringing food to their tables.

Sadly, is almost impossible to find clients who know how to use cryptocurrencies or that are willing to even try. Mainly, because of the convenience other mainstream services like PayPal offer to them. But again, those services are not a real option to some of us… There are indirect ways of using PayPal, but they are really cumbersome, not 100% safe, slow and we lose around 20% of the money in fees/comissions… When you live in a country where you can barely afford food or where the little “extra” money you make is actually to help other families stay afloat. Every % counts.

As you can imagine, living in these places makes us very conscious about the problems of depending in governments, bank institutions and the general, mainstream economic systems. Is almost impossible to have a conversation about cryptocurrencies without touching politics or, on the other hand, the bad reputation cryptocurrencies have for money laundering or “drug money”… But lets try to maintain the conversation about the viability of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment for Blender artists and maybe create some sort of “tutorials” about the use of cryptocurrencies for potential clients. Can we?

English is not my first language, but I can speak decent english (and perfect spanish)… I consider myself almost an “expert” in cryptocurrencies, I find the technology absolutely fascinating and having proven its life-saving value here in this country, I really want people in other countries to consider this option as a form of payment when hiring for a job.

I’m sure I’m not the only one in this situation, and given the geek/nerd and alternative/foss nature of Blender, I don’t think the topic of cryptocurrencies is that intimiating to us… If we don’t use mainstream software and are perfectly happy with Blender (even happier than with 3ds Max or Maya), some might even moved away from them… I think the idea of exploring “alternative” forms of money is not that awful, right?

Anyway, I’d like to know your thoughts, your experience with cryptocurrencies (any of them… Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Dash, Ethereum…) and maybe what would you like to see or have to be able to try them.

P.S.: Even the Blender foundation accepts cryptocurrencies, maybe I could start creating a tutorial explaining how to use cryptocurrencies to send donations to them and help familiarize Blender users (and potential clients) with its usage.
Just in case, here’s the Blender foundation page for donations and their cryptocurrencies addresses:

Cheers!
tuqueque.

3

Some cryptocurrencies where designed to help with this problem. One of them was ripple. In america there are bitcoin atm machines in some areas. Not every area has one though. The atm machine allows the exchange of fiat (USD) for btc (bitcoin).

4

In the eyes of the law, “cryptocurrencies” are not “currencies” at all – they are simply barter tokens.

(Never mind that they consist of "numbers, bearing unusual mathematical properties, that are at-the-moment hard to compute. That doesn’t matter.)

Bartering has a long, legitimate, and productive history. Back in the day, many industrial workers including lumberjacks and gold(!) miners worked for “scrip.” These were pieces of paper and/or mass-produced metal tokens … and yet, the system worked, and in so doing avoided many cash-management problems for the associated companies. (After all, many “gold mines” never produced an ounce of anything, and lumber orders were highly seasonal.)

You are, of course, fully-entitled to “barter” for anything, and in fact many partners in tightly-connected industries now do so. (Although they are still obliged to pay cash-equivalent taxes.)

Yes, it’s all perfectly legal. But, the one thing that you must always bear in mind is: “it is n-o-t ‘currency.’” It is n-o-t(!) “coin.”

You are *bartering." Nothing more, and nothing less. It is n-o-t ‘legal tender.’

5

Seeing this thread has not gained any attention for 3 months, and it being slightly off topic, i’ve decided to close it.

The thread was also originally bumped by a comment that is now deleted, but we forgot to reset the bump date on the thread, meaning the thread got an accidental bump.