In his latest RNS, Argo CEO Peter Wall announced he would be receiving his salary in Bitcoin, making Argo one of the first publicly traded companies to pay their CEO in Bitcoin. While many companies in the blockchain industry offer their employees cryptocurrencies as payment, this is also taking off with global brand employers.
The crypto mining company Argo Blockchain has made provision for any of its employees to be paid in Bitcoin should they opt-in. Argo will use the Toronto-based Satstree exchange’s Bitcoin Savings service to convert and process Bitcoin at a daily market rate.
“We are the first publicly traded company to pay their CEO in Bitcoin”, CEO Peter Wall commented, further elaborating on this in his RNS video, by stating his salary would remain the same, based in pounds sterling, and would be converted at the end of the month depending on the price:
“I would love to get a fixed salary in Bitcoin, but it’s a bit of a liability to the company […] if Bitcoin continues to appreciate then my salary would depreciate, and visa versa.”
The Argo CEO commented on various items in his latest RNS including the mining infrastructure that the company is heavily investing in, and the company’s monthly revenue which almost doubled compared to the previous month.
While Argo may be the first Publicly traded company to pay their CEO in Bitcoin, many companies have been using Bitcoin to pay their employees salaries for quite some time now. In fact, most of the companies operating in the blockchain space tend to pay their employees in cryptocurrencies, usually BTC, Ethereum or a stablecoin – tethered to the value of the US dollar. However, this form of payment is increasingly emerging into mainstream view, and a wider market of companies are starting to consider using Bitcoin to pay their employees.
Airbnb, and Uber, are two such examples of global brand employers that pay, either in part or in full, their employees in cryptocurrencies. Facebook have also joined this group of companies who pay their employees in crypto- offering employees who work on the Libra project the option to be paid in the Facebook Libra cryptocurrency.
More recently, Twitter have sent out signals to suggest that they could be the next major company to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet, following in the footsteps of Tesla. The Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, has long been an advocate of Bitcoin with several bitcoin-related projects.
Ned Sega, the CFO of Twitter stated that they were considering adding the crypto asset to their books or using it for Twitter employees’ salaries.
“We’ve done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in Bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor should they ask to be paid in Bitcoin, and whether we need to have Bitcoin on our balance sheet,” said Segal.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice