GMO Internet is a Japanese web hosting company and has just offered to pay a portion of their employees’ salaries in bitcoin. This shift is not compulsory and is entirely optional. The employees can opt to receive as little as 10,000 yen ($88) or as much as 100,000 yen ($890) of their salaries in bitcoin. This will be offered to some of the workers in February but the plan is to eventually extend the offer to all 4,000 employees.
We saw the roller coaster ride bitcoin went through this year. It was around the $1,000 mark at the beginning of 2017 and is now steady at $18,000 and it is still expected to rise over $20,000 before 2017 has run its course. This has been due to the fact that many businesses have legitimized the currency and are accepting it.
If you are not sure how bitcoin works, you can check out the video below:
This has also seen a number of new businesses jumping on board and GMO Internet is one of those companies. It debuted bitcoin trading and exchange business in May this year and they plan to add bitcoin mining business to their ranks by January. The company even has further plans to launch their own initial coin offering (ICO) for the GMO coin, which the owners could cash in to purchase cryptocurrency, nex-gen mining boards, and/or a piece of cloud mining business.
The Japanese company firmly believes in this program, as it will make the employees more familiar with the cryptocurrency and will make it easier for them to work on its many aspects. “We hope to improve our own literacy of virtual currency by actually using it,” company spokeswoman Harumi Ishii told The Guardian.
No one can correctly predict the future of the cryptocurrency because one thing we know about it is that it is highly unpredictable. Some experts still believe that is a massive bubble that could pop at any moment and there are some who believe that it is the beginning of a new financial era.
If the employees of GMO Internet do opt to get the part of their salaries in bitcoin, they get a 10 % bonus so that is an incentive that will influence the people’s decisions. The employees can either convert their bitcoin salary into traditional currency or wait out on withdrawing it and see where it might take them in the future.
It is a gamble which could end badly or it could take them to new heights. Only time will tell.