Kraken Paid 250 Employee Salaries In Bitcoin Last Month

As Bitcoin (BTC) has finally left the bear market that haunted it for the longest time, some companies are starting to pay salaries in Bitcoin again.

Kraken is one of the companies which followed this trend. The company paid 250 employee salaries with cryptocurrency last month, as revealed by them recently in an answer to Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital.

He originally affirmed that there was “no way” that people would accept to be paid in Bitcoin. The Kraken Twitter profile then took its chance to affirm that they did pay 250 of their employees in BTC and that a former employee which received in BTC in 2012 retired in 2013 when the prices spiked.

At the time of this report, Kraken employs around 800 people, meaning that almost a third of its employees are receiving BTC instead of fiat cash for their work.

The Challenges To Pay People With Crypto

While many employers and employees both would like the idea of salaries paid in Bitcoin, it is fair to say that there are some challenges which have to be overcome before people can simply do it.

For instance, there are issues which stem from the local legislation. The United States, for example, affirms that at least a portion of salaries has to be paid in fiat, either cash or check. There is also the problem that it is hard to tax crypto revenues in some countries, too, which could become a problem in time.

Another important concern is price volatility since the value of BTC could theoretically go down as soon as salaries are paid, which could end up being bad for the people who received the salary. Nobody would complain if prices went up, but there is no way of being completely sure of what will happen.

Kraken is not without its own payment problems, too. Last month, a former employee of the company sued it for $900,000 USD affirming that he was not properly paid.