73 sats \ 6 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 3 Jun \ parent \ on: A Bitcoin Marketplace Like Fiverr or Upwork for Talent in Bitcoin bitcoin
On the fiat side, Rentacoder.com got acquired by freelancer.com which got acquired by upwork.com and they in turn rolled up many other gig economy job sites. Each time, the quality of the average freelancer declined, although it is still possible to find very good ones if you know what you are doing. They have network effects that are very challenging to compete with.
My concern is that if these Bitcoin only gig sites become successful and scale properly, upwork.com will swoop in, acquire them, or alternatively, offer Bitcoin as a payment option crushing this niche category.
Freelancer acquired Rentacoder (vWorker) and a number of other companies but it was o-Desk and e-lance that merged, and eventually rebranded as Upwork.
As far as Bitcoin-only (or even bitcoin-accepting) competitors, Upwork and such are unlikely to accept bitcoin from employers, and unlikely to pay workers in bitcoin. The reason is they do not want disintermediation. If all Upwork does is match make employer to worker, then that's a single transaction, afterward the employer can just pay the gig worker directly for subsequent work. If the employer is already paying Upwork in bitcoin, it's a trivial step for the employer simply to pay the worker directly.
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Thanks for the clarity on the history of the acquisitions.
The more interesting question is clarification on how Bitcoin payment makes disintermediation more feasible than fiat payments? PayPal is pretty ubiquitous in non-sanctioned countries.
it's a trivial step for the employer simply to pay the worker directly.
Doesn't this imply it would be trivial for a Bitcoin based gig site to get disintermediated as well? How does the Bitcoin based gig site survive under such circumstances?
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this imply it would be trivial for a Bitcoin based gig site to get disintermediated as well? How does the Bitcoin based gig survive under such circumstances?
My guess is that they don't, at least not in current form.
If I had to take a stab at a prediction, I'ld say that at some point there will be success in bitcoin-based taskwork / gigwork. If it does occur, it will probably come in the form of tasks identified by AI that need to be performed by a human, and some high volume of taskwork / gigwork hiring then is performed where payment is in bitcoin.
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My guess is that they don't, at least not in current form.
nym does not check out, at least in current form.
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Didn't have much luck on Upwork either, to be honest.
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I did...as an employer, not as a worker. Although, I can imagine that it is quite difficult to cut through the noise. Job offers get very large numbers of bids, many of them insanely cheap. Like most things, you get what you pay for, and it takes an experienced nose to sniff the quality offers.
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