Volatile economies prefer to receive pay in cryptocurrency – Report

• The study revealed that in the last six months, more employees have requested to receive their payments in crypto despite the general crypto market downturn.
• Many countries in the Latin American region are struggling with rising inflation.

A new report by the global hiring platform, Deel, states that workers in countries with highly unstable economies are more likely to receive their paychecks in digital currencies. The report titled “State of Global Hiring” was released on Thursday and shared with the selected media.

According to the report, despite the crypto winter, crypto represents 5 percent of payment withdrawals from its platform. This figure represents a 3 percent increase from the second half of last year. The report further shows that residents in countries with highly unstable currencies and economic conditions would be more willing to adopt crypto payments.

Some nations cited in the report are those in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Latin America (LATAM) regions. Crypto withdrawals in the EMEA region account for 24 percent of the total, while LATAM nations represent 67 percent. Those within the North American region accounted for only 7 percent of all crypto payments.

The Asia Pacific region is the lowest. Crypto payments there was only 2 percent of the total crypto payments. However, Bitcoin (BTC) is the most popular option among all digital assets for crypto payments in these regions. Forty-seven percent of all crypto payments were in Bitcoin (BTC). Circle’s USDC and Ethereum (ETH) occupy the second and third choice options, respectively.

Twenty-nine percent of crypto payments were in USDC, while 14 percent were in Ether (ETH). Surprisingly, USDT wasn’t among the choice of workers. Deel’s head of expansion for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Shannon Karaka, said the study discovered that many who receive their pay in crypto weren’t withdrawing everything or converting all of it to fiat.

Reasons for crypto payments and withdrawals

Hence, it is likely that they consider their cryptos as a long-term investment. Karaka adds that the report discovered that three groups of people are happy to receive their pay in crypto. Those using it as a hedge against the volatility of their fiat.

The second are those working in regions where their banking systems are old and can cause delays in payments. The third is people willing to include digital currencies in their investment portfolios. However, the report discovered that the LATAM and EMEA regions account for most of the crypto withdrawals. Hence, it is likely that they belong to the first two groups.

Deel’s report was a conclusion drawn from surveying more than 100,000 worker contracts on its platform from January to July 2022. The company assists companies with hiring, onboarding, and paying staff members across multiple nations. It remarked that LATAM is the region that makes the highest number of international hires.

A recent Trading Economics data showed that many Latin American nations are suffering from rising inflation. Inflation rates in Paraguay, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil are already in the double digits. The preference for crypto payments from workers in these regions may have been influenced mainly by the weakening purchasing power of their fiat currencies.