Dear @DTube #19 // do we need a global steem bloggers agency for crypto conversion to fiat?

in dtube •  7 years ago 


good morning my lovely @dtube peoples.

recently i’ve had a few issues converting funds from an exchange into fiat, the actual conversion process was flawless and was backed up with probably about ten parts of ‘trust’ — address, name, phone number, recent trades etc — i used local bitcoins for it.

the problem was with a certain ‘app banking’ solution which i won’t go into yet until i’ve pulled out the rest of my money because it’s my rent money also, i’ve basically taken my $ balance from my course residuals mixed together with some crypto ‘trades’ from bitcoin to fiat.

it seems that some of these app banks do not support ‘crypto’ trading even if i’m receiving money from another ‘person’ — yesterday i got an email quizzing me about my job, what i want to use my account for and my ‘relationship’ with a person i had ‘received’ money from.

it was obvious from the email that this person was ‘not trusted’ and that could probably be for a number of reasons — personally i think it was his name, country of origin and probably because he had been doing a lot of trades and was obviously flagged.

the email basically said that i had to supply that information within 72 hrs otherwise my account would be closed. i instantly went into panic anxiety mode, here was the system potentially going to f___k me again because they deemed that transaction in some way a little iffy.

to be fair to this certain app startup after submitting my information they got back to me within five minutes and confirmed my account was ok to use but that i should no longer use it for crypto trading funds — ugh, bummer.

was kinda interesting to me of all the ‘trades’ i had done (around 3/4) that it was this gentlemen name that was flagged up — makes you wonder about what will be judgemental about you as a person when the AI get’s hold of the data in years to come, especially when it comes to scanning years of social data, it could really limit our ability to earn or move around the planet and it’s something we need to be aware off.

which got me thinking back to the first question — what is my job title, how much is my salary and who is my employee.

crypto and the system are a gulf apart. the data sets don’t marry up, they need basics like this because the system has a fixed way of looking at things. they need to put me in an algorithm box which systems use to make weighted decisions based on my job title, income and have some due diligence for connecting in and interfacing with my employee.

as we all know in recent years hacking and database leaks of passwords and data means that all our information is out there, addresses, social connections all of it is ready to be accessed and potentially manipulated.

so anyway, title, salary and employee.. . let’s get into that, how do i explain that away that i work on a ‘proof of brain’ blockchain and that i make online courses where i earn residual income from online websites like upwork?

people glaze over, instantly jumping to the conclusion camp of ‘dodgy’ internet things, god forbid you mention the ‘bitcoin’ or ‘crypto’ work — for the average person in the street those are very much connected to illegal, dodgy, underground and i’m sure that the tech, blockchain is thought of similar, in fact you’ll probably find that they have even less information about what that even means.

so what do we do? how do we educate and fix this problem in the short term, how do we bridge the gap between platforms, how do we link the data together in a way that the real world understands?

i’ve been thinking about this overnight and i’ve been thinking about a digital agency that handles payroll, employees (bloggers mainly) and their income and job roles, think of it like a recruitment company — you know the ones that you go to when you want temporary work.

they handle your payroll, tax issues and pay you via what are seen as ‘normal’ to the system methods — you have a job role, are an employee and you receive pay on ‘their’ payroll. it’s simple and the system understand it.

so i’ve been thinking maybe if we had a steem payroll system where you were an employee, where you had a profile page listing details that was fully web searchable, that had transparent earnings listed for the posts and content you put out, the top performing posts for visualibility that appeared on the front page of google.

so this recruitment agency would be able to receive your steem (or other cryptos) give you a fair rate, convert that to fiat for the country you were in (perfect also for travelling digital nomads) and you were an employee of that company (you could also link workers with workers for discounted rates) they paid you once a day, week or month and handled all your tax.

this way you would have a job title, a public facing landing page for your job role, recent posts, recent projects, transparent information about your crypto investments and who your ‘account manager’ was with a direct instant message or phone number someone could dial to confirm your employment.

i realise this is a big project to build but i’m certain that it’s something that is needed in the crypto verse because lots of people are needing to ‘trade’ crypto for fiat for the country that they are in — i realise that not everyone see’s blogging as a job or needs a title but some people do.

what do you think would some kind of steem recruitment agency be useful to you if you could pay in your steem (or any other crypto) and have it converted to the going rate of fiat currency in the country you were working in at the time?

personally i’d jump at the chance to have an internet payroll system that can handle the conversion, pay me as an employee, handle any tax required and provide me with a public profile so that when i’m flying between countries i have a real time updating profile of my work.

i discuss it in the video today, i’d love to hear you feedback about it!


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I agree there is a major problem, right now I haven't taken any money out however the problem I have is I have a bittrex acc and a coinbase. Now I verified coinbase with my passport but coinbase now want me to verify my bg acc. I went into town the other day and the bank will charge me 7 euro to send 1 euro online and if I want the bank themselves to do it they will charge 31 euro. I can't use my uk acc because I have to go to the bank to update my number with my bg number, they wont allow it online or over the phone so I am stuck on getting funds out at the moment. If you know anything I am open to suggestions.

yeah i think a lot of people have similar issues. i'm afraid i don't have solutions to it that's why i was talking about this today.

Well...................

well, well, yeah, well. .. ;)

Absolutely LOVE this idea- would gladly pay membership fees or “dues” as well you’re right it’s awful being questioned at the border- that’s mostly why I feel like I keep upwork going and you have skillshare- because even tho it’s only part of the picture it something you can explain without being typecast as a hacker or cyber criminal lol

yeah we need like a 'middleware' (lol, middleout) so we can easily explain so it's not so alien, it's only data and so we need that data to FIT with the usual 'parameters' of the way the system expects it.

we do need middle out wear. you're right, going to have to speak their language. The person or people who can do that translation are going to be the big winners in the next few years, that's for sure.

Crypto needs a PR agency!

This is a fantastic idea! I’m not sure if such a global organisation would be feasible in a world that still has borders, but I just joined a similar one, though they don’t really accept crypto (yet..)
Not sure if they exist in the UK yet http://smart-eu.org/

I really like their model and I can imagine something like that for crypto people

ok, interesting link. thanks for sharing! :) -- yeah i really wanna explore this more.

Super interesting video dude! Can you tell us which app/bank it was? 😬

How do you discuss 'proof of brain' with people?

That's a difficult one ay. Personally, I think there is too much to steem to understand casually. Unless people are interested enough to do a touch of learning most discussions seem to be misunderstood.

I think 'blogger' as a job title would be pretty legitimate these days, sure you'll get more funny looks/questions but I'd like to think most people know what a blogger is even if they don't realise it can be an income source.

The agency idea is interesting just sounds like a mammoth regulation nightmare.

It's still early days, hoping everything gets easier and more transparent over the next couple years

thanks man. yeah, problem is i have rent to pay! so years is too long!

but yes, agreed regulation is a nightmare. i know that @lloyddavis is linking the 'legal' side to crypto and smart contracts that stand up in the 'real world' (tm) but yeah it's something that would be useful for me, at least just working and employed by someone who can deal with that like semi-permanent recruitment agency, i'd love to see that be a thing..

i will tell you the bank once i have got all my funds out, so that will be at some point tomorrow ;) -- just in case :) -- they were fair with me but the email did get my anxiety up! :)

most discussions seem to be misunderstood

especially at border patrol which is where me and @dayleeo seem to have the most problems which is kinda nuts because she normally comes over with a stack of paperwork of proof of earnings etc from upwork etc -- we are in the process this time of the 10 year travel visa so that should make things a little easier.

yeah it's them not knowing it's an income stream which causes problems, when they understand that i make video courses and sell them online and i can prove that it's all cool but yeah it can be difficult.

thanks for your comment man, would love to get nomad.pictures up and going sometime when you are freed up, what's the best steps i should take to get the basic github version up and running do you think?

spin up a digital ocean instance or something?

rgr that, have you used coinbase? I know a lot of people dislike them but seem legit for bank transfers and the like. I guess facing these difficulties is part of being ahead of the curve. I agree it's not the most fun part though.

yeah lets get nomad.pictures up, you wanted a photofeed.club version but for @nomad.pictures right?

The photofeed is static so it's running for free on netlify 💯no need for DO box 🙌

yeah i kinda got turned off from coinbase because of the whole like information request sharing thing for people that had $20k or more investments, they kinda rolled over really quick on that and so i'm always wary of companies like that, plus it's not a UK company. i guess i just wanna find solutions and ways to make these transitions for digital workers (not just myself) easier. I need to have a good chat with @lloyddavis about it, see if i can get him on for a video chat about his current project.

yeah i want a photo feed for @nomad.pictures -- we want to take what we have on http://nomad.pictures and bring it all across to the steem account and then we can use steepshot from mobile to update it, be kinda sick. we have a bunch of other things we will need to add too but also i want to step through the process because i really wanna learn.

can't wait to have a chat with you about the three apps i want to make - the past, present and future steem blockchain things i want to make, maybe we should have a video chat about them sometime? i know your a busy man so i won't take up too much of your time, i guess i just need a bit of direction pointing into the things i need to learn and where.

hey mate, sorry for the delayed response. Was only on yesterday for the Utopian panic 😬

Totally keen to help get the pictures from http://nomad.pictures onto the blockchain and we can use the photofeed.club design/code. Do you know how many pictures are on the site that are not already on the @nomad.pictures account?

Would be ace to hear about your ideas! Lets jump on video in the week 👊

i'll have to have a look but i think we have 500/600 photos on nomad.pictures -- we will need to download them all and start uploading them across, be a good exercise in making a format layout anyway for our posts, at some point some kind of staggered uploader as well -- so many uploads a day -- i've got nomad.video as well and i want to really get that going this year full of videos for people to use, cinemagraphs and such like, animated gifs -- i've got both @vlogging and @cinemagraph so wanna use those accounts..

yeah just heard about the utopian panic, sucks man .. . hope it get's resolved.

be good to video chat anytime you can this week, maybe somewhere in the middle? cheers man. have a fantastic day.

I did actually create a script as a scheduled steepshot uploader using steem.js, not 100% if it still works though. Something like that might be better than doing ~500 manual posts. it's pretty cool idea because you can embed the license with the post on the blockchain.

👍 we'll catch up in the week. I don't have any fixed plans this week just working on my own projects so can be flexible :)

great let's try for wednesday then eh? i'll drop you a message then and a link for a video chat! :) and yeah that steepshot uploader sounds PERFECT! :)