By
Steve Muchoki
April 18th, 2024
Freelancers with Braintrust will now be able to receive payments in their crypto wallets in a matter of minutes.
Payment company Stripe has announced a collaboration with the decentralized talent network Braintrust. According to a Thursday post by Stripe, Braintrust has added a new payout option with the payments company’s Stripe Connect service, enabling freelancers to accept USDC payments.
The payment company is available in over 110 countries to 4.4 billion people who can receive payments in their local currencies and crypto. Stripe first enabled USDC payments in April of this year for a select group of Twitter content creators. According to the announcement, the company is looking to add support for more blockchains in more regions. Jeremy Allaire Co-founder of Circle, the issuer of USDC says USDC is a more inclusive way of sending money globally. This includes freelancers who live in countries where the majority of the population is unbanked.
“Access to reliable economic infrastructure can vary depending on where our talent lives. The global reach of Stripe Connect levels the field. We were able to get up and running with Connect crypto payouts quickly, allowing our talent to get paid in minutes, rather than days. Instead of building a giant money movement organization, we’re able to focus on our mission of connecting great talent to great jobs,” said Mark Williams, VP of Infrastructure at Freelance Labs, which built Braintrust.
Early Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik commented on the news in a tweet.
Important #crypto #stablecoin signal from @stripe.
Stablecoins are a consumer-useful crypto killer app slowly being discovered and entrenched.
e.g. Wiring USD vs sending USDC, USDC wins every time. https://t.co/HnT0PFWkoi
— Ser Jeff Garzik (@jgarzik) September 22, 2022
Braintrust is a decentralized talent network that connects skilled freelancers to clients such as Porsche and NASA. It has helped freelancers earn almost $100 million. Freelancers with Braintrust will now be able to receive payments in their crypto wallets in a matter of minutes as opposed to waiting days in some cases for bank transfers.
Stripe first integrated crypto payments in 2015 by adding support for Bitcoin, making it the first major payment company to do so. It would go on to discontinue Bitcoin payments only to reinstate them after the 2021 bull run.