So you've developed a portable skill, and you'd like to put it to profitable use. How you get paid is vital to your portability. I call this, portable income.
Portable Income
Having portable skills is important, but it only opens a possible door to portable income. Portable income is something that must be pursued, and negotiated. Portability of income primarily means you are able to receive payments for services you render, unhindered by your location. An important enhancement is that the income arrives in multiple streams via multiple channels, that arrive in different wallets or accounts. The ultimate enhancement to portable income is its resistance to the censorship of third parties, for which cash and cryptocurrency are the only form that qualify. More on that later. First let's describe what income streams are, and how they differ from one another.
Income Streams
Income streams can be classified as active or passive. An active income stream is what most people associate with the income from a normal job. In an active income stream, human effort is exchanged for value in return. With a passive income stream, your wealth is put to work in order to generate a return. Some examples of this are regular savings interest, or dividend payouts. A day trader of stocks would be considered as making active income, while a person buying and holding the same stocks to receive dividends, would be considered as making passive income.
You may be a digital nomad, but it does not mean your income is fully portable. You could be relying on a single source of income, such a single corporation or customer. The more restrictive a single stream is, the more streams you should have to offset the risk of losing any one of them. Having multiple income streams is essential. Both the source and destination of those income streams should be diverse. For example, it's risky to have multiple income streams being deposited into the same bank account, because at any time, your access to that bank account could be lost. If your income streams are crossing borders, they are at even more risk of interruption or interference.
Bank Transactions Such As SWIFT / ACH / Credit Cards / Checks
If you are receiving pay from a large corporation, it is most likely being direct deposited into your bank account via a system like SWIFT or ACH. These systems can be very vulnerable to interference, fraud, and revocation. At any time a bank can deem a transfer suspicious and freeze your funds. Banks are are granted great power in censoring transactions based upon mere suspicion. The burden of proof will be on the individual to prove the validity of transactions. Also, at any time a government can interfere with cross-border payments, or worse, seize them altogether. Sometimes the reasons may be valid, and other times it could be mistaken identity. Either way, the burden of proof will be upon the individual to prove their intentions in order to regain access to their money.
Don't even get me started on checks. The check might be 'in the mail', but that doesn't mean the check writer can't issue a stop payment while it is in transit! Friends don't let friends accept checks. Accepting credit cards is no walk in the park either. Not only will you need to enlist a payment processor who gets a cut of your transactions in processing fees. You also have to contend with fraud and potential chargebacks.
Payment Services Such As Paypal, Venmo, Or CashApp
In many cases, payment services like Paypal, Venmo, or CashApp have replaced traditional banking. But make no mistake, payments you receive via these services are subject to the whim of a corporation, much in the same way bank payments are. Corporations actually have more freedom to interfere with your payments, because they are not bound by bank laws. You could easily find your funds frozen indefinitely, with little or no recourse. Paypal for example, can hold your funds up to 180 days if you participate in an activity they deem "restricted", or a "risk" at their "sole discretion".[src] Whatever you do, don't leave a lot of money sitting in your Paypal account.
Cash / Barter
Cash is still king, but that will not always be the case. Governments are taking great strides in eliminating cash, or at the very least discouraging its use. That being said, if you are in a position to receive cash payments for your services, it's not a bad idea for at least one stream of income. Cash that is well circulated offers a high degree of anonymity, while a numerically sequenced group of crisp new notes received from a bank probably has low anonymity. On some occasions, you could even look for opportunities to barter, which is trading your goods and services directly for the goods and services of another person.
Cryptocurrency: The Most Portable Payments
Cryptocurrency has the best chance of dethroning cash as a censorship resistant medium of exchange and becoming the fuel that powers a truly decentralized economy. Whether it's exchanging a good or service for Bitcoin, receiving rewards by blogging on Hive, or operating a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) node, the opportunities for building both passive and active income streams via blockchain are increasing every day! As Andreas Antonopolis aptly says, Bitcoin is borderless, open, immutable, censorship resistant, peer-to-peer payments. In my opinion, other cryptocurrencies can be described in the same way, as it is my belief that crypto is not a zero-sum game. If you are logged into a Hive front end reading this post, congratulations, you have a potential income stream available to you.
Income != Wealth
A last word about income, and introduction to the subject of my next post. So you have multiple income streams, and perhaps you are doing quite well. Does this mean you have wealth? No it does not. Income can be used to build wealth, but income is not wealth until it is stored as wealth. And that wealth is not safe unless it is portable, which we will talk about in my next post.
Note: Portable income may be subject to the tax law of your local jurisdiction. Don't say I didn't warn you.
