I WORK FOR WAGES, and NOTHING ELSE.
I am a professional union electrician (IBEW). I only work for wages, because when I don't it is called charity, not work. In my contract, I get paid weekly, usually on Wednesday at midnight (Direct deposit), or on Thursday with a cheque. If it goes to Friday, it has to be placed in my greedy little hand at least 2 hours before my shift end in the afternoon, so that I can get to the bank and cash it. If it goes to SATURDAY and I'm still not paid, I get an extra bonus, like 10% per day or something like that... (It NEVER happens... Employers never let it get to that point.
Full Wage Package
The full package consists of a base hourly rate, vacation/holiday pay, health & welfare fund, training, pension, annuity, and a few other things. The package linked above works out to be worth roughly $60 per hour. More deductions come off after that, but let's stick at $60 so a 40 hour week adds up to $2400 gross. Now, the employer has an office full of people working payroll to get all this stuff calculated and distributed into the proper accounts. Some goes to the company that administers the benefits plan, some goes to the union hall, some goes to the local Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee, and some even makes it into the worker's bank account. After deductions and tax, that $2400 looks more like $1200. Less, depending on your income tax situation.
Just Pay me in Bitcoin!!!
YES! Finally! I got my wish. I spent the last year convincing my employer that he can easily pay me in bitcoin. The night before payroll is to hit my bank, my employer buys bitcoin, and transfers it to me along with an emailed pay stub. So for this week's pay, say I get 0.5BTC after deductions. Last week maybe it was 0.6BTC, and maybe next week it will be 0.4
I don't have to draw you a map here. I'm taking you to Volatilityville
OK, we're looking at a total bloodbath in crypto, and so many of us have taken a serious kick in the nards. The volatility is characteristic of a commodity or an ETF or a Molybdenum mining pennystock, much more so than a currency. Proper currencies are STABLE. They don't make you regret using them every other week. Some people are here for the wild ride, trading one risky coin for another, winding up the leverage to the moooon, and all that. They know (or at least SHOULD) that they are playing with fire, and could lose a lot of coin instantly.
If my employer has exposure to bitcoin, my weekly BTC Payroll might end up causing him some serious problems. I don't need to spell them all out, but they are numerous. The story all ends with me and my employer both throwing in the towel and returning to the old, tired payroll method. The bottom line is that you are never, EVER going to convince people that they can stop using Legal Tender for wages if the replacement option is going to give them a different takehome pay every week.
What if your employer could send your weekly pay, minus deductions, into a basket of stable currencies? People have been speculating as to what the next world reserve currency will look like. Will it be backed by Gold? No. Will it be Oil? No. Will it be the USD$? No. The Chinese Yuan? Not on your life. These each have their own flaws which would make it impossible to singularly back a new currency. How about bitcoin? No! It is not a currency. It is a working concept, at best. Yes, it works as designed, and it has propelled the market to unimagined heights. But it is still not mature, and to make it work the way we want will make it bloated, cumbersome and EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE to use.
Do you want to trade some smartcoins?
Close your eyes and imagine me asking you that in a soft, sexy Norse voice...... Put yourself back together and think about this: What if, today, you could take your direct deposit payroll in $USD, or whatever your Legal Tender is, and have it transferred into a personalized account which would automatically distribute it into a basket of stable currencies which you are in control of? You want your WAGE to be distributed into something stable. Or even mostly stable. So you tell your WAGE that you want it to be 80% US Dollar, 10% Gold, 5% Silver, and 5% Bitcoin. Or maybe a bit riskier and go 20% $USD, 30% Gold, 30% Bitcoin and 20% DOGE. Imagine if your paycheck could essentially be invested into whatever currency you want the moment it hits your digital account
Just imagine what WAGE earners will be able to do when they have this power.
Your WAGE will be a user-defined account, which you can change at a moment's notice. One week you like having exposure to Gold, and the next week you want exposure to Silver. Or you know that oil is finally going to be fashionable again. Or you might want exposure to an instrument which tracks a stock exchange. There is quite simply nothing that you can't do, once your WAGE is under your control.
Just imagine if this was possible TODAY.
IT IS.
The Contest
The WAGE is a smart coin which automatically invests itself into the various Bitshares smart coins. It is user definable, meaning a different thing to each unique WAGE earner. It is as stable as you want it to be, and you don't need a financial advisor or stock broker to go in and tinker with it. You are in control. Your WAGE is the gateway to your portfolio. It is a simple, secure, decentralized set of instructions which tells your checking account where to put your earnings. Your WAGE is whatever you want it to be.
With this in mind, we need a logo for the WAGE. It is not as much a coin as it is a smart pipeline between your paycheck and your savings. It tells your money what to do and where to go. This is all about fostering mass adoption of Bitshares, so think along those lines.
I'm offering a prize of 25 Bitshares for the best logo scheme. The winning logo may be posted in its own thread, but just make sure you link it back here via the comments.
Remember the 1 billion dollar prize. Keep your eye on the ball.
Anything we can do to encourage mass adoption of the Bitshares platform will get us closer to this prize.
My Billion Dollar Idea, Part 1: Thorium
