Cryptocurrency Exchange Midex has conducted a social experiment which provides some insight into the public perception of cryptocurrency and its legitimacy as legal tender.
Fifty employees selected from five international organisations were invited into an office and told that they had the option of being paid in cryptocurrency instead of fiat money, and their reactions were recorded. The participating companies were not cryptocurrency-related.
The resulting video is quite entertaining:
All participants expressed surprise. A couple of highlights for me were a woman saying that the whole thing is a bubble "and it's definitely going to collapse at some point", a man asking "oh come on, why not?" on the phone (presumably to a more fiscally conservative significant other), and another asking "are you sure this is legal?"
Overall, 36 percent said yes to their salary being paid partially in cryptocurrency, and 4 percent were ready to go all in.
In December of last year, Japanese giant GMO Internet announced that it would be offering the option of Bitcoin-denominated salaries to its workers from March of this year. Results are not yet in, but that company has more than 4,000 employees so that will be something to watch for.
Midex
Midex is a cryptocurrency exchange that "has no extant analogues in the world", according to its website. It adds that "mistakes and compromises" are eliminated by use of a "combination of neural networks and smart-contracts".
The company combines Blockchain technology with modern banking, offering some of the features which are often available to customers of foreign exchange exchange platforms, such as trade analysis tools and trading bots. A trading bot is an algorithm which users programme to trade on their behalf and according to their preferences.
Its ICO is ongoing. It has sold almost 18 million MDX tokens, and is aiming for 25 million. At 0.00296 ETH per token, it has so far taken in almost 20.5 million dollars.
