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Regulators may still want to imply Bitcoin is merely a tool for criminals, but for many middle-class users, it’s proving to be a lifeline.
Even as politicians like European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde criticize cryptocurrency for providing “loopholes” used for “funny business,” people like Saeed, an Iranian immigrant to France, see cryptocurrency as a necessity, because of the difficulty using mainstream financial systems.
Until 2020, Saeed, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was a software engineer in Iran whose salary barely reached €300 due to rampant inflation. In 2017, he started freelancing for international clients that paid him in Bitcoin. By September 2020, he’d finally saved enough Bitcoin to go to graduate school in France. However, the pandemic made his immigration process much harder.
“I passed all that strange bureaucracy and to get to a course in France last September, with only €1,000 in my pocket,” Saeed said. “HSBC, Banque Nationale de Paris, La Banque Postale, all rejected me, declining to open a bank account. I finally found a bank after a month.”
In the meantime, Saeed used Bitcoin. He is exactly the type of person who benefits from “loopholes” in the traditional banking system.
“Many people in Iran are working with European tech companies,” Saeed said. “Maybe I can’t buy Bitcoin directly from the exchange because of my nationality.”
Saeed thinks Lagarde represents bankers’ and government interests, not average citizens, who are happy to work with him. He said stricter regulations would make his access to the financial system more time-consuming and expensive, because he’d have to pay friends and colleagues to transact on his behalf. However, Iranian migrants are hardly the sole user group relying on Bitcoin during the pandemic.
In the United Kingdom, a British expat named Paul found himself trapped in London when flights back to his Asian country of residence got canceled. Due to tight capital controls in his former country, and the challenges of repatriation during constant lockdowns, Paul was living in between regulatory systems.
“I closed down the business [in Asia] just before the pandemic started. My father passed away and it was difficult to continue my company,” Paul said. “I was in hotels and Airbnbs for weeks and didn’t have a residential address…without Bitcoin I would have been locked out of cash. I could only take money out of the ATM for a certain number of months because it’s limited to holidays.”
Luckily, Paul had a little Bitcoin from earlier that year. Unlike Saeed, he didn’t feel comfortable with the technical aspects, but he learned quickly. He used Bitcoin to buy gift cards for groceries, phone bills, hotels and Uber, plus paid a friend back in Asia to help wrap up his apartment and put things in storage.
“I think it was generally a bad idea but, at least with Brexit, thank god we won’t be subject to whatever Lagarde does,” Paul said, adding that regulation can be beneficial if it avoids restrictions for people who don’t have banking access.
Today, almost a year later, Paul still doesn’t have access to most of his financial accounts. Instead, he downloaded Monzo, a banking app that uses passports for identity verification instead of residential addresses. He pays friends in London to deposit to his Monzo account.
“It becomes really convoluted. I primarily use crypto because it’s easier,” Paul said. “One of my friends is a student from Nigeria and had a similar experience. He used Bitcoin to pay his school fees… I’ve been at my current residence for a couple of months, so I would be able to finally open a bank account. But now I don’t really see the need, especially with the news of negative interest rates.”
Meanwhile, the fiat-denominated price of Bitcoin surged over the past six months. This provided Saeed and Paul both with a little extra capital to spend time figuring out what they want to do next. For Saeed, does it make sense to do the graduate program online, with fewer networking benefits and hands-on experiences (the reason he came to France)? How does Paul move forward with his career now that his family business closed and his sector (music marketing) is in shambles?
Buying Bitcoin could be considered a form of gambling. Indeed, many middle-class hobbyist traders accrued life-changing amounts of wealth over the past year, usually by experimenting with risky software. For people like Paul and Saeed, who generally avoid experimental trades and lack alternative investment options, Bitcoin’s price appreciation is helping them get through a period of abysmal job markets and intermittent lockdowns. People don’t need to live in a dictatorship or a country suffering from high inflation to benefit from Bitcoin. I would know; I’m one of them.
Like many people during the pandemic, my living situation changed dramatically and I initially couldn’t work full-time from home. I was lucky to sell a few poems in exchange for cryptocurrency, usually via direct messages and Bitcoin wallets or as digital collectibles through collaborations with tech-savvy artists. Then the bull market surged again, sending those meager earnings high enough to cover some of my bills. A valet worker and student in Kansas named Hess had a similar experience.
Quarantine helped kill his relationship of six years and he found himself needing to move out. He put his savings into Bitcoin during spring 2020, so that by December he was able to move out.
“COVID hit and I was out of steady work for four months,” Hess said. “Honestly, if it wasn’t for my decision to basically throw 70% of my net worth into Bitcoin, I don’t think I would be in as good of a place mentally and financially.”
To be clear, that is an extremely risky financial move and I would not advise it as a first resort. Yet, for many people experiencing unexpected change due to COVID-19, Bitcoin has become the lifeline it was for Hess.
Over the past year, Bitcoin donations may have gained popularity with several American communities, including some of the extremist groups involved with storming Capitol Hill. Incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen echoed Lagarde’s concerns about Bitcoin being used for criminal activities.
However, so far, the analytics company Chainalysis estimates such donations add up to roughly $522,000. These numbers might also be compared to the cumulative totals managed by other subjects referenced in this article. For yet another lawful example, Lawrence Douglas, a former operations director at an event security company in California, lost his job as a result of the pandemic.
“Cash App pretty much changed my financial life,” Douglas said. “Bitcoin prices during the calendar year of 2020 provided me with lots of wiggle room, while I currently search for a new job.”
As an unemployed Black man, he was statistically less likely to have connections who could help him learn about stocks or precious metals, for example. He said Bitcoin, comparatively, has a “low barrier to entry.” In April 2020, he turned his stimulus check into a little Bitcoin nest egg. By November, he was utilizing a strategy called dollar-cost averaging, routinely buying small amounts of Bitcoin.
Douglas, like Paul, first bought cryptocurrency during the pandemic. On the other hand, when I interviewed more than a dozen Bitcoin users across Europe and North America for this article, most of them were crypto veterans who said Bitcoin gave them “peace” during the year-long crisis. Anesthesiologist Quentin Lobb, for example, said “bottom line, our net worth grew tremendously in 2020, thanks to Bitcoin. It has provided a pleasant and exciting sense of financial security.”
Yet another crypto veteran, Texas real estate agent broker Brandon Arnold, said the national political and economic situation was more “mentally taxing than ever before.” Against that backdrop, controlling a fraction of his own wealth gives him a sense of security. The price appreciation helps too, to be sure, though it’s not why Bitcoin is now so popular with middle-class users.
“If I factor in the risk of not having access to my capital, the price volatility doesn’t really matter,” Paul said. “As long as the price of Bitcoin doesn’t go to zero, it’s still more useful for me than the other options available.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/how-bitcoin-is-helping-middle-class-users-survive-the-pandemic/
Omnipresent, which helps companies employ remote-working local teams worldwide, has closed a $15.8M Series A funding round. The fundraise was led by an undisclosed investor with participation from existing investors, Episode 1, Playfair Capital and Truesight Ventures. The company said it closed the round five months after it’s July 2020 $2m in seed round.
Founders Matthew Wilson and Guenther Eisinger started the company as part of Entrepreneur First’s London cohort in 2019.
Omnipresent says it ensures the process of remote-hiring costs a fraction of what it would if the company did it on their own, by using Omnipresent’s platform to onboard employees compliantly in 150 countries. It provides employees with local contracts, tax contributions, and local and international benefits such as health insurance, pensions and equity options.
In a joint statement, Guenther Eisinger and Matthew Wilson, Co-CEOs of Omnipresent said: “Even before the pandemic we recognized the revolutionary potential of breaking down legal and administrative barriers of international employment. As former business owners, we had first-hand experience of what a headache it is to navigate the complexity and bureaucracy of building global teams. Now with the pandemic and the global shift towards remote working it’s confirmed that we are on the right track.”
Wilson told me in an interview: “For instance, in Canada, we have a Canadian entity and we enter into an employment relationship with that person in Canada, on behalf of our client, so they don’t have to set up any of the legal infrastructure themselves in Canada, or any of the 149 countries that we operate in. We then manage all the ongoing administration of the employment relationship, whether that’s from an HR perspective, from an employee benefits perspective, or if they want to get health care for instance.”
The company competes with other firms like Remote.com and Boundless HQ.
Carina Namih, General Partner at Episode 1 Ventures commented: “While talent is evenly distributed around the world, for too long, opportunities have not been. I have experienced first hand the challenge of hiring globally. Omnipresent has already become a crucial piece of infrastructure for global teams working across different countries.”
Joe Thornton, General Partner at Playfair Capital commented: “Remote work undoubtedly represents the future of the modern workforce. The sooner companies adapt, the sooner they will reap the massive competitive advantage associated with a globally distributed workforce, including increased workforce productivity and satisfaction and a larger and more diverse pool of talent from which to recruit workers.”
Omnipresent said its own employer surveys show that over 85% of employers will be employing remote or international employees in 2021.
Instacart plans to lay off nearly 2,000 of its workers, including the ten workers from the Kroger-owned Mariano’s who unionized early last year, Vice reports. These workers are responsible for in-store shopping and packing of groceries.
According to Vice, ten of the workers affected unionized with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546 in Skokie, Illinois. However, they have yet to negotiate a contract with Instacart, according to Vice. Instacart notified the union of the planned changes earlier this week. In the letter, Instacart said it planned to stop using in-store shoppers at Kroger-owned stores, which includes the Mariano’s store in Skokie, in Q1 and Q2 of this year, but no earlier than mid-March.
Currently, Instacart says it’s working to place the impacted employees with jobs at retailers or place them at other grocery stores that still rely on Instacart shoppers. In total, Instacart said about 1,800 employees will be affected by these changes. Those laid off will receive separation packages, according to Instacart. But according to UFCW, Instacart will provide between $250 to $750 to the workers they let go.
Instacart referenced the potential layoffs in a blog post earlier this week in a post about new pickup retailer model. In it, Instacart said it would wind down some of its in-store operations at some retail locations to switch to what it’s calling Partner Pick. Through Partner Pick, instead of relying on Instacart shoppers to pick and pack groceries, retailers will rely on their own workforces with the help of Instacart’s technology.
“As a result of some grocers transitioning to a Partner Pick model, we’ll be winding down our in-store operations at select retailer locations over the coming months,” an Instacart spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We know this is an incredibly challenging time for many as we move through the COVID-19 crisis, and we’re doing everything we can to support in-store shoppers through this transition. This includes transferring impacted shoppers to other retailer locations where we have Instacart in-store shopper roles open, working closely with our retail partners to hire impacted shoppers for roles they’re looking to fill, and providing shoppers with transition assistance as they explore new work opportunities. We’re also providing all impacted shoppers with separation packages based on their tenure with Instacart.”
This all comes as Instacart is gearing up to go public. In November, Reuters reported Instacart picked Goldman Sachs to lead its IPO at a $30 billion valuation. That would be a big jump from the $17.7 post-money valuation Instacart secured in October with a new $200 million funding round.
In a statement, UFCW International President Marc Perrone called these workers a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic and called on Instacart to stop these plans to fire them.
“Instacart firing the only unionized workers at the company and destroying the jobs of nearly 2,000 dedicated frontline workers in the middle of this public health crisis, is simply wrong,” he said. “As the union for Instacart grocery workers in the Chicago area and grocery workers nationwide, UFCW is calling on Instacart to immediately halt these plans and to put the health of their customers first by protecting the jobs of these brave essential workers at a time when our communities need them most.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/instacart-is-eliminating-the-jobs-of-unionized-workers/
Spotify continues to enlist big names for its podcasting efforts. The latest: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay and her arts collective Array.
DuVernay has directed theatrically released films including “Selma” and “A Wrinkle in Time,” but she also made “13th” and “When They See Us” for Netflix, and she’s been an eloquent proponent for streaming as a more accessible way of telling her stories.
Spotify says that through this multiyear partnership, Array will be creating exclusive scripted and unscripted programming for the streaming audio platform. For these productions, it will be working with Gimlet, the podcast network that Spotify acquired in 2019.
“Recognizing the undeniable power of voice and sound, I’m thrilled to extend ARRAY’s storytelling into the realm of podcasts,” DuVernay said in a statement. “The opportunity to work with [Gimlet’s head of content] Lydia Polgreen and her passionate team drew us to Spotify as a home for our audio narratives and we couldn’t be more excited to begin this new creative journey.”
In addition to acquiring Gimlet, Spotify has also signed exclusive podcast deals with Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Rogan and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
All change in the capital as the Biden administration takes charge, and thankfully without a hitch (or violence) after the attempted insurrection two weeks earlier.
In this week’s Decrypted, we look at the ongoing fallout from the SolarWinds breach and who the incoming president wants to lead the path to recovery. Plus, the news in brief.
THE BIG PICTURE
Google says SolarWinds exposure “limited,” more breaches confirmed
The cyberattack against SolarWinds, an ongoing espionage campaign already blamed on Russia, claimed the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as another federal victim this week. The attack also hit cybersecurity company Malwarebytes, the company’s chief executive confirmed. Marcin Kleczynski said in a blog post that attackers gained access to a “limited” number of internal company emails. It was the same attackers as SolarWinds but using a different intrusion route. It’s now the third security company known to have been targeted by the same Russian hackers after a successful intrusion at FireEye and an unsuccessful attempt at CrowdStrike.
Today, I disclosed publicly that @Malwarebytes had been targeted by the same nation state actor that attacked SolarWinds. This attack is much broader than SolarWinds and I expect more companies will come forward soon.
— Marcin Kleczynski (@mkleczynski) January 19, 2021
