#612 Paying Remote Employees in Bitcoin

Marcelo Lebre is the CTO and co-founder of Remote. Marcelo previously worked as the VP of Engineering at Unbabel, has held several CTO positions and is a startup advisor. In this conversation, we discuss the remote working trend, compensation structures, legalities and compliance of paying international employees, democratization and decentralization of wealth, stablecoins, and bitcoin. ======================= Did you know nearly 338 million dollars worth of NFTs were sent last year? And in 2021 that number is growing faster than ever. Looking to make your first NFT? Check out NEAR’s fast, scalable, low-cost, open-source platform. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at near.org ======================= Matrixport, Asia’s fastest growing digital asset platform with $10 billion in assets under management and custody, it offers one-stop crypto financial solutions including fixed income, DeFi in 1-click, structured products, Cactus Custody™, spot OTC as well as lending. You can earn from high single digit with fixed income to high double digit yield with their Dual Currency Product. If you hold crypto and look for yield, this is the app you don’t wanna miss out. Go download the Matrixport App and enjoy a welcome offer of 30% APY on USDC here: https://invest.matrixport.com/en ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Marcelo Libre is the CTO and co-founder of Remote. Marcelo previously worked as the VP of Engineering at Unabable and held several CTO positions and is a startup advisor. In this conversation, we discuss the remote working trend, compensation structures, legalities and compliance of paying international employees, democratization and decentralization of wealth, stablecoins and Bitcoin. Before we get into this episode with Marcelo, which I really enjoyed, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Matrix Port. Have you lost your way in this low-yield environment while searching for a better store of value to beat inflation? Look no further. Invest with Matrix Port to get more out of your crypto. Invest today and

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  earn 30% annualized yields. Matrix Port is Asia's fastest-growing digital asset platform founded by crypto veterans Ji-han Woo and John G. With $10 billion in assets under management and custody, Matrix Port offers one-stop crypto financial solutions, including fixed income, DeFi in one-click, structured products, Cactix custody, spot OTC and lending. You can earn more from high single-digit with fixed income to high double-digit yield with dual currency product. If you hold crypto and look for yield, this app you don't want to miss. Go download the Matrix Port app and enjoy a welcome offer of 30% APY on USDC for new users. Next up are my friends over at Cosmos. Cosmos is building the internet of blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges

• 1:31Anthony Pompliano?

  to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp. Last but not least are the folks over at NEAR. When you think of NEAR, you should think of what you can do with it. It's an open-source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications, overcoming high fees and slow speeds with its fast, scalable, low-cost and climate-neutral blockchain protocol. That's why NEAR was recently awarded the climate-neutral product label from South Pole. One transaction on NEAR consumes about 1,300x less carbon than a similar transaction in other chains. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at NEAR.org today. N-E-A-R dot O-R-G today. Alright, let's get into this episode with Marcelo. I hope that you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:41Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Got a very special treat. I've got Marcelo here with me. For some of you, you may remember that I had Yob from Remote come on the podcast a while ago, and I'm very, very fascinated by this business because they have become one of the quintessential kind of go-to default softwares for teams that have distributed across multiple countries. And so with the recent rise of remote work, and I kind of chuckle when I say that because it basically smacked everyone in the face during COVID, companies like Remote have really taken off. And there's nobody better to talk about the trends behind it and also to kind of talk about compensation and all the intricacies. So Marcelo, thank you so much for joining us today. Super excited about this.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Thank you. Very happy to be here.

• 3:24Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's jump right into the meat and bones. Give us the one or two sentence. What does Remote do? What do you do at Remote? And then we'll jump into some of the fun stuff.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Cool. So what do we do? Global payroll. Think about hiring people internationally. Company in country A wants to hire someone in country B. That's it. That's what Remote does. What I do, I am the CTO and co-founder, so I build all that. I run all the tech stuff in a company. That's what I do.

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I asked for two sentences. You gave me two words, global payroll. That means you know what you're doing. If you could describe it that simply. If you guys are doing payroll, you have tons of data. You've obviously talked to literally hundreds, if not thousands, of teams. Compensation structure ends up being one of the most complex topics around remote work, mainly because people don't know, should I pay everyone the same based on a single location? Should I adjust for cost of living? How do I actually use compensation to incentivize folks? There's all these different differences. And so how do you think about compensation structure? And what have you seen as some of the best practices?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Cool, yeah, this is a very important topic, especially these days. And it's very important to note that it's mutating quite a lot. If we compare it to what these discussions do even two years ago, let alone five years ago, they're completely different, right? You used to have this common structure or standard in which you would just discuss like salary ranges, usually by city or by country, and that was it. Some companies, especially startups, they would even throw in some option, share options or some benefits, and that was it. Very closed loop, very simple, very straightforward. You'd often just be able to compare with your best friends, neighbors,

• 5:15Speaker 02

  whoever that worked for either a similar company or company on the road. And you could, it was very linear. Now, what we see these days with a globalization of work,

• 5:29Speaker 02

  called whatever you want, future of work, remote work, all that. It just changed everything completely. What, and the reason for this is because there are fundamentally different perspectives and expectations around compensation, given on people's experience and even their background, their experience, their country. If you discuss, for instance, discussing salary with someone from the US, fundamentally different from discussing with someone in the UK, in France, and Portugal, Spain. Why is that? Because cultures are, have, companies, countries have deep culture around usually money, the way they handle money in their own hands.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  So if you throw all this on top of this crazy pandemic and all that in the same mix, what you get is a very fluid discussion. What I, what I mean by this is that for some companies in some areas, it's normal to discuss compensation very classically. I, in, like, this is the range, this is what we do, this is what we pay, period, right? They don't expand. Now, if we start talking about distributed companies, then you can discuss, is this distributed in the US, in the Americas? Is it worldwide, just in Europe? And then it starts changing quite a lot. In certain countries, the benefits that people expect

• 6:53Speaker 02

  are a very good portion of the compensation package. In others, not so much. And I haven't even started to discuss the salary itself. In, in, in, in several cultures, in many different cultures, they're used to being paid quite low wages. Let's talk Portugal, for instance, even they were Spain. Compared to the US, compared to UK, Netherlands, like very low wages. But with all the, the democratization of work and the remote work, this all changed because, for one, people can literally travel wherever they want to travel to.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  There is a lot of people in big companies relocating to their home countries, home cities. And that means that something's got to change, right? Are you going to bring your salary with you? Is it going to adapt to the local economy? And so many different companies have completely different strategies. The number one is nothing changes. We pay the same, that's it. This, from our experience and, and my personal belief, this breaks very easily, right? It only takes for a few people to live in a different city. And, and that's it. Comparison, people will start. People will not, in this day and age, have any reason to stay working for a company

• 8:17Speaker 02

  that will pay them significantly less than someone, another company next door. Then you have companies that create sort of an equation in which they will adjust the salary based on cost of living, the country itself, the, the expertise or the seniority around it. And make this sort of complex E-ish equation in which you, at the end, there's a number that says, well, you're worth this in this country or that in that other country. Now, this allows for, it's a bit more, it's a bit of a democracy in a way that...

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Gives you a sense that people actually have a choice or a saying in this, when you don't really. But it's a bit more flexible because it adjusts to global distribution. Now, there's also a third option, which is something that we also see becoming more and more the thing. We try to practice this at remote in which it's sort of a

• 9:31Speaker 02

  harmonization in a way, in which you don't, you're not static, so you don't say we pay this everywhere. And you also don't say we're going to fundamentally adjust this to your wage. So what you do is you create a very comprehensive and sort of fluid dynamic range that allows you to pay considerably better in some countries. What we do, for instance, is we have a threshold in which we don't go lower. So we have a worldwide threshold and we don't lower that independently of if, if, because in some countries that we hire, if you get that lower threshold, you're probably going to be the king of a small city somewhere.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  But even so, it works pretty well because it gives you a good sense of belonging at the same time, very fair compensation, and it also doesn't tie you to where you live. Now, these three compensation structures or strategies are the ones that we see working more and more these days. Like the first one is kind of self-deprecating over like continuously. Second and thirdly, like second that is very well established, a lot of companies use this, works well for most of them, especially at scale, because it's fairly transparent way of calculating wages. Like the third, it requires a bit more effort because it's more people focused.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  And so it requires continuous adjustment so that the whole company throughout the world doesn't feel either left out or an outlier for good or for the bad. But all in all, There's a lot of things changing about the compensation structure. And we we used to see that it used to be just about the money or the salary. Now it's it's it's flowing a lot more towards what benefits come with it. Are you somehow given any sort of stake in the company like options, shares? The benefits that we're discussing, is it more just about health? Is it anything else?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Is it is it about, because as you know, since the pandemic started, people started looking into other things like decent workstation at home, which for a lot of people comes as a given, but it is expensive. Like this camera is expensive, this desk is not super cheap. And so for a lot of people, this is expensive. And and it's but it's really worthwhile because this is where you work from, where you're making money. And so it also becomes all these tiny things start to become like this sort of quite fluid and interchangeable compensation package. And this is, this is, it, it, we, we, it's not, it's not slowing down.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  This change, these dynamics, what people throw into these compensation packages is completely growing exponentially, the complexity of it all. And we haven't even started talking about different currencies and ways to pay you.

• 12:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, so I was gonna say, it seems like there's one, the compensation package. Then there's actually the amount of the salary, right? And and that's kind of a global strategy that people have to really set. Then there is this like free market force that if you, as my employer, don't really kind of do what I think is best, I'm just gonna leave. Like, see, there's other places that'll pay me, they'll pay me higher wages, given regardless of where I work. And they're not going to try to just localize it. So I think there's definitely a shift happening there. That then leads to the question of like, how do you actually do this? So my understanding of some of the complexity here is there's legal, there's compliance. And then there's actually like wiring, right? Or like or ACHing or direct depositing and like the actual execution from a technology standpoint.

• 13:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So maybe we can go through it in that order of just legal compliance. And then the actual technology of executing the the transaction and how you think about it as a CTO of remote.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's also a fourth point, which is very much security. Okay. Which it's very often that people just, because when you think about compensation, you usually think about banks sending people money, the banks, big portions, big chunks of money. But nowadays, I mean, with all the technology that you have, the way you can just ship money around the world, it can be tricky. There's a lot of technology that has to go into anti-money laundering stuff and crazy things like, because all of a sudden, for instance, Remote, we, from day one, we're a distributed company. We have no single office anywhere in the world.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  We have an entity, so a company, in 50 countries around the world. It will be at 80 to 100 by the end of the year. And we have people in, literally across the world. Now, when you're hiring someone, you, first of all, there's all the usual geneticists where you go through the hiring process, get to meet the person and all that. So what makes you think that person is not exposed somehow? Is not part of a blacklist in whatever end of the world? And that's very complicated, because in some ways, well, it's fine, depending also on the country,

• 15:01Speaker 02

  because in some ways, some countries don't really care about this. Other companies are very picky about this. And this is just about filtering people, right? This is just about understanding who you're actually hiring, because are these people actually people? Or are you hiring someone that all of a sudden is like an AI or deep fake in front of camera? Because you've never actually seen this person. So, security of all this, like all of a sudden you have all this data flowing everywhere around the world. You have your whole personal information, where you are, who you are, where you live, your ID cards, bank information, what have you.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  All the crazy stuff that people can do with this, right? It's very, very easy these days to impersonate someone with all this data. And so what a lot of companies, I mean, have to keep in mind is that this has to be center stage for any kind of discussions about when you employ people abroad. You have to understand who you are, who these people are. So at Remote, for instance, we have a process called KYC. In which, well, in the onboarding process, you have to upload, of course, the documents and you have to, there's a sort of camera thingy that you have to smile and wave so

• 16:29Speaker 02

  that we know that you're a real person, that you're not just someone holding a picture and impersonating someone else. And that will validate towards, against a few lists of publicly exposed people, so on and so forth. And it's like if you're not wanted for something really bad and to understand exactly this. Now, the legal part of it all. What Remote does, we have our own entity in all the countries we operate. What does this mean? It means that there's a company, a remote company, actually created in this country. When a company comes to us and says, well, a company in the United States wants to hire

• 17:11Speaker 02

  someone in France, for instance, it means there's a remote France there and we create a bridge between the two parties, the American company and the French employee. And so we're able to legally bind these two entities in a contract, a working contract, providing clear, local working contract that people expect, because when you're in a country, well, that's what you expect, a fully compliant working contract. And why does this matter? It matters because these days, I mean, the way civilization evolved, you, your, the

• 17:56Speaker 02

  way that you're Perceived towards society is very entangled with what you do towards it. If you wanna get it alone and go to bank for it. You have, often is the case that they'll ask, do you have any proof that you actually make any money? Uh, if we're gonna give you some money, we have to have some kind of proof. Uh, if you're a freelancer or a contractor, you know, this, this can become quite harder in that way. And, and same for other benefits within society. So having a fully compliant legal working contract locally, it allows you to have the best of both worlds. One, have probably a better compensation because you're work, you're in France, working for an American company. Odds are your salary is gonna be a bit bigger than, or better than it would be locally.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Um, let alone if we talk about countries like Portugal. Um, it, it will easily triple or quadruple your living wage. Which means you can have a completely different way of facing your life or quality of life as well. So, um, that's more on, on, on the legal side of things. And then, um, on a day-to-day basis, we essentially use a lot of the technology that we, we, we have on our platform to run things so that you don't really have to interact with remote. You're an employee of this company on the other end of the world. Um, and about, and about money, um, the way we go about it, it's very simple. Uh, your money essentially just lands on your bank account as an employee.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  We, as, as a globally distributed company, there are many things that we do to make sure that your money lands in your bank, on your bank account when your salary is due. The reason for it is because we have to operate at this level. So there's a lot of currencies involved in some countries. For instance, the, what the employer wants to know, look, I wanna, I wanna hire Anthony. Um, I wanna pay him a million dollars a, a week. Um, and that's how much I wanna pay him. And for you, if you're in France or Germany, whatever, you're gonna get your money in Europe. Uh, you don't really care about all that. What, you, you have an expectation of being paid in Europe and that's it.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  And so, um, because of the fact that we have multiple entities and multiple bank accounts in all these countries in the world, we're able to use the technology to leverage that money. To leverage also the fact that money comes from one end. We also have our bank accounts in incoming currency and we also have the payout currency in which we're going to make sure to pay out your salary.

• 20:31Anthony Pompliano?

  How does it work in terms of the employee if they are an employee of the legal entity in that location and they're not actually an employee of the business in which they, you know, quote unquote, work for? If there's any sort of like legal hangups or any sort of contractual disagreements or anything like that, does that put the employee in a situation where they basically are dealing with two entities? Or is it very similar to kind of how it traditionally would be as well? Like, I guess, like, what are the downsides of this type of model versus what most people think of as like the employment relationship?

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, very little, if any. So the way that happens is that contractually speaking, the employee only deals with one entity, which is remote entity. The contract which is presented is signed between the parts, is agreed upon between the employee remote and the employer. And this means that there are no surprises. So for one, we own all the legal stuff. So we have our own legal counsel remote and that means that we're able, we usually say we own the full stack. So we own all the legal parts, privacy, security, compliance, and financials.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  So all this we can, we will discuss in detail, in a sense. And why do I say the detail? Because it's very, very important. If you do in the traditional ways, and some companies still do this today and probably works for them, sure, is that there's a standard, there's the contract that you present to people and then you either sign it or you go on your own way. With Remote is quite different. The reason why they do this is because they don't really own the entities. They use third-party services to provide this sort of abstract service, a conceptual service at the end of the day, but they don't own it. And what this means is that if you look at your contract and it says, "Well,

• 22:33Speaker 02

  well, at the end of the day, your firstborn is actually the employer's." And you're like, "Oh, I don't really want to give up my firstborn." And so they're like, "Well, we're not really gonna negotiate it with you. Either take it or leave it." And the reason for this is that they don't own that contract. They don't own that entity. They're just a proxy to that business. And that's why Remote is so different, because we own it entirely. And so whatever agreement is going on between you and the company that decided to hire you, we will honor it. Now, there's always a limit, which is what the local law allows us to do.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  For instance, let's say that your employer asked you to work seven days a week, nonstop, 10, 12 hours a day. In several countries, this is not allowed. Even if you decide to sign it, at the end of the day, this would not be allowed. And so Remote always operates in the best interest of the employee, of course. First, second, the employer, but thirdly, and also sometimes at zero, I guess, the law, which rules all, right? And so in several cases, usually there's always a small adjustment

• 23:53Speaker 02

  based on the country or on the legal implications, or if any. Some countries are way more cool than others. Some are really strict about these things. But with Remote, we're able to literally flex around all the things that happen, which is not the case with the classical way of doing things. In the classical way, it's just there's a standard contract and that's it. There's nothing you can do about it. Now... The biggest difference between... So what you can ask is like, what if remote doesn't exist? What if your solution didn't exist? What then? Like, people still work from different countries to other companies and this still somehow works?

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Well, it does. In that case, you're considered a freelancer, contractor. You don't really have an employer. And that means you don't get to have the benefits. You get your salary in whatever currency they can pay you with. And you don't get any of the benefits, local benefits of the... in that society. Because you're a freelancer, you go to a bank, you can get a loan and stuff like that. Those are the big differences.

• 25:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you think about the types of assets that you're paying in, the currencies that you're paying in, one of the things that immediately most of the audience is going to jump to is you can use US dollars, you can use a local fiat currency, you could use Bitcoin, you could use a stablecoin or some other type of asset. How do you evaluate the different technologies that you could use to actually get the currency to an individual? And is there been, or have you kind of operated with Bitcoin or with stablecoins? And kind of where are you guys in that journey of evaluating those as potential payment methods?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I can't really tell you what we do, but I will, I'll give you some hints. So there are a few things that go into it. One is, even though it sounds really weird, but in a lot of countries, the local law dictates the currency in which you are paid at as an employee. Even if you're in a country where currency exchange is not nice to you. So in these countries, there is no workaround. Unless you're able to make some sort of arrangement in which you can pay in digital assets.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Bitcoin, stablecoin and stuff like that. Now, this again, it differs quite a lot from country to country. Most countries, they really define as an employee, you're defined by law, your agreement with your employer in which the currency, about the currency that you're paid with. Secondly...

• 26:44Speaker 02

  In some countries, you do have the option. Um, these countries, some, often, um, when you're given an option, it's because something is fundamentally wrong. So, a lot of people do, honestly, usually take the currency of the employer, which is very often like, um, US dollars, British pounds, or euro. Right? This usually means that the local currency is so bad that even the local government tells you, "Well, you can get your money in whatever way you can get your money." Um, and then you have a third option. In, in some countries in which you can literally pay in whatever,

• 27:25Speaker 02

  or it's whatever money you can get into that, um, local area. And that's where things get tough. Now, what, what we've seen towards, and, and quite connected to this, is that currencies, especially, I, I, I tend to think that we have this sort of very positive and also privileged position in which we're seeing the world changing. We have entities in all these wor- these countries, and we're deeply connected to local government and laws, and we see the changes daily, because they, they get, we get all the updates all the time, all, all these things. That things are fundamentally changing.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  However, we now see that currency is an expression of local markets, but that at the same time, ring-fence the capabilities of the people in it. So this may sound quite fancy, but what it means is that in a lot of ways, currency is a way to limit money from coming in and going out, which, in a global and distributed economy, is, is very worrying. Because you see that today, you can jump on a plane, just be whatever, in a couple of hours.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  You can buy a house. There's a lot of countries in which you can get a status for, like, in, through the internet, and, and, and get a citizenship, without actually going into the country. Yeah. Um, and get all the benefits, as if you were born there.

• 29:01Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things that's really interesting to me about what you all are doing is I think people have this idea of, let's say I live in the United States, I didn't want to move abroad, my employer says okay, and I moved to, I don't know, pick your country, Italy, and now I'm living in Italy, but I don't stay in Italy. I, 30 days later, decide I want to actually now go to Switzerland, and then I want to go to Singapore, and then I want to go to Costa Rica, and then I want to go to Colombia, and then I want to go back to Italy. Does remote empower the ability to almost have, like, the true nomad-type employee? Or like, how are companies handling more of the nomadic lifestyle than just the, "I moved from domestically to some international location, and then I'm static in that location?"

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna give you firstly, the very grim truth of all this.

• 29:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  The worst part is that when, this already happened to us a few times, you're land in a country, you create the entity, you're ready to start your own business like you do in all the other countries, and then, of course, you have to have the legal boundaries in which you operate, and you have a certain business, and what we do is a bit different in some ways, and then you look at the law, and it's like you have to pick where you land, right? So a remote sits here, and then you're like, "This is from the 1950s."

• 30:28Speaker 02

  They don't even understand the terms that we use to describe our business. It's not like the technology, the business. And you reach out to local council, and they're like,

• 30:41Speaker 02

  "Can we have 10 meetings to try to understand what is it that you guys do? And after that, maybe we have to resort to somehow local government entity that can somehow help us?"

• 30:55Speaker 02

  And eventually, after battling quite a lot, you will find a somewhat fitting legal representation of what you are and what you do in that country. And so this is unfortunately the truth of global employment today. A lot of countries in the world, the laws that abide all this are very, very old. They are not, they didn't even know what a computer was at the time. So this is what we have to work with. Like you have to literally build a supercomputer with dumb bricks. And on top of this, what we can do,

• 31:40Speaker 02

  and this is what we're trying to achieve. Like, a lot of people say that the future of work is remote work and what have you. No, the future of work is you chasing your dreams, not spending your dreams to earn some money. This is the utopian world that had been preached for many, many years, even with Star Trek and likes in which you work in the things that you're passionate about. And like I can do today, like you do here. And that's what new societies are about. And this makes no sense to most interpretation of corporate law, legal law, and even finance.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  The way that we have to tackle this is firstly to create an abstraction that sits on top of all these different countries that for anyone outside of it, for anyone that is not remote, this just looks simple, right? This means that we have to work our butts off to make it look simple, to make sure that whatever beneath remote lands on top of that country, we are legal, we're enforceable, because that's very important. In some countries, you can present whatever contract you want, but it's not enforceable. And so by doing this, you start creating this sort of a highway for what comes next.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  And what comes next is the definition of digital nomad, in which by today's...

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Definition ist wie jemand, der einfach nirgendwo stoppt und alles verreist. Und das ist nicht das, worum es geht. Worum es geht, ist, dass du die Freiheit hast, alles, was du willst. Es ist für dich, zu entscheiden, in welcher Währung du bezahlt willst. Weil du entscheidest, was die beste ist und was für dich passt. Gleiche für die Verkehrssicherheit und die Kompensation, die um die Benefit Package geht. Also, wenn du verreist hast, wenn du viel reisen willst, dann reden wir über die Grundlagen. Reden wir über die Gesundheitssicherheit. Wenn du zu Portugal kommst und du ein gewisses Arztarzt brauchst oder wenn du etwas in einem, eine Emergency brauchst oder was auch immer, ist das okay.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Oder wenn dein Gesundheitssystem nicht groß ist, kannst du eigentlich in und aus gehen und bezahlst nichts. Jetzt, wenn für eine bestimmte Grundlage du in die USA oder ein anderer Weltstaat kommst, ist das ein völlig anderes Thema. Und für die digitale Normenz, die in der Lage ist, zu existieren, müssen viele Dinge verändern. Und was wir tun, was ist, was ist der erste Schritt, ist eine Art gemeinsame Schicht zu schaffen in verschiedenen Ländern, besonders in den Ländern, in denen wir landen können. Und eine Art, eine Reise und eine MASH-Netzwerk ist ein gemeinsames Grund, um all das zu bauen.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Was, um zu sein ehrlich, sehr, sehr schwierig ist. Das ist die Grundlage, warum wir so erfolgreich sind. Es ist, weil, wenn es einfach wäre, würde jeder anders das tun. Jetzt ist es tatsächlich das Ziel, das wir erreichen wollen. Jetzt ermöglichen, wer, was, dass sie leben, was sie wollen. Und machen, was sie wollen, Geld verdienen. Ich rede von verschiedenen Währungen oder was auch immer.

• 35:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Wenn du daran denkst, um welche Richtung wir gehen wollen, wie sieht Remote 10 Jahre später aus? Ja, es fühlt sich wirklich so an, dass Remote Arbeit die Standardwerke werden. Firmen werden Remote-Arbeitstrategien haben. Sie werden die Infrastruktur brauchen. Also, lass uns einfach durchgehen, bevor wir weiter gehen, um zu Ende zu kommen. Wie sieht Remote 10 Jahre später aus?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  So what we want to become, and this is what we're already representing for a lot of companies that are with us. There's more than a scaling engine. What we want is the experience that you have whenever you travel. So you get your phone, your phone, you're traveling in an airplane, you land, you turn up your phone and connect to some carrier. You're not sending texts again.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  You don't even think, well, will my phone connect somewhere? What, what, what connection, what kind of connection will I get? Is what kind of technology is this? This is not something you think about, especially these days. You would 15 years ago, now, now you don't. And this is the kind of experience that we want Remote to be. We want so that when you're creating a company, be it locally, international, distributed. What you think is, I'm going to get the best for my employees. And I'm going to get the best employees in the world rather than just the best employees in my street. And I'm going to pay the best that I can. And given that, I'm going to get the best people in the world. And that's it. And you don't have to think, well, do I need to get an accountant?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  And do I need to get a lawyer who's going to draft my contracts? Who's going to pay a people? How about pay slips? What about taxes? Who's going to run taxes? That's not something we want you to think about. What we want you to think about is growing your business, growing your dream. And that's it. That's what we want Remote to be.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I think you guys are well on your way to accomplishing that goal. So I'm a fan. A lot of people who listen to this are obviously fans, users of the product as well. Before we finish up, I always ask everyone the same three questions and then you'll get to ask me one at the end. What is the most important book you've ever read?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  The Book of Five Rings.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, that's a great one. Actually, that's a book that a lot of people won't know. Tell us why you think that one is.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yes, so it's a book written by Miyamoto Masashi.

• 37:29Anthony Pompliano?

  The greatest samurai of all time.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Literally, he was very tall, apparently, but it essentially talks about five rings, sort of five different virtues, things that you eventually, as you grow and you go through life and experience, you start mastering, sort of like the elements, until you master the ultimate, which is the void, with the art of either creating it or filling it, and can be literally just using anything in life. It's just a bit of inspiration. I like the way that even though I go through life in different phases, I look at it and it represents different things in different times, but it still holds true.

• 38:10Anthony Pompliano?

  That is probably one of the best suggestions we've had on this podcast, because a lot of people do not know that one. Sounds great. Next question comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. I sleep five, six hours. Now I'm eight, nine hours. If I get my sleep, I'm good to go. If I don't get sleep, I'm cranky and basically an idiot, can't think clearly, etc. They've got a thermo-regulated bed that they've got me sleeping on that is basically freezing cold. My wife hates my size. She makes sure it's warm, but mine is freezing cold. What's your sleep schedule and how has that kind of changed over the years?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Oh, I never was much of a sleeper. I don't like it. I think it's a waste of time. I hate that I need it. And since two years ago, I became a dad to this kid that absolutely hates sleeping. And so I go to bed like maybe 11:00 PM, midnight. I wake up at 6:00, 6:30. That's it. And sometimes-

• 39:05Anthony Pompliano?

  11 to 6:30, that's seven and a half hours. You're not that far off.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:11Anthony Pompliano?

  That's pretty, that's pretty good. All right. Last question. Aliens. Are you a believer or non-believer?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, sure. Of course. Why not? I'd be crazy not to.

• 39:23Anthony Pompliano?

  That might be the shortest answer we've ever gotten. Yeah, of course.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Look, I often say like a bit of a joke, like the last year was a pandemic, crazy pandemic. And we've gone through really crazy shit around the world. And I used to tell my friends when I was a kid and I thought about the end of the day, at the end of days, I would thought about aliens, not a virus that I can see. So.

• 39:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. You could ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  What makes you tick?

• 39:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Happiness. That's it. I just want to be happy. Like, it's pretty simple. There's something fun about it not being very quantitative, but you know it when you have it and you know it when you don't have it. But if you just constantly pursue just being happy, then you got a shot. So it's pretty much it. Not, not really a groundbreaking answer, but, but, you know, true and kind of gets right at the core of the whole point of whatever UI and anyone else in this world does on a daily basis.

• 40:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes, exactly. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or learn more about remote?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Remote.com. Very easy website to find. My name, Marcelo. Very easy to find online as well.

• 40:42Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really enjoyed it. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out remote work. How can they pay folks? Especially using Bitcoins, stablecoins, or any other options, but remain within legal and compliant manners. So we appreciate all the work you guys are doing. And we'll definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Likewise.