51% of Techies Happy to be Paid in Bitcoin, Survey Finds

Event organiser Tech in Motion recently carried out an interesting survey on digital currencies. The findings are hardly surprising: techies love bitcoin.

Tech in Motion

sent out questionnaires to 18,000 members and 847 were kind enough to respond.

When asked whether they would like to be paid in bitcoin, 51.1% said "yes, absolutely". However, 18% said they would rather wait and see where bitcoin ends up in a year or two.

The remainder said they would rather be paid in cash, while 9.9% said they would not accept bitcoin payments, as they don't believe the currency will last. Only 1.18% of those asked said they had no idea what bitcoin was.

As we pointed out earlier, many geeks tend to have a love affair with digital currencies and the results of the survey are encouraging, although it was limited to tech professionals. In any case the results bode well for payment processor firms that are trying to get into the payroll market.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Bitpay is already developing such a service in the US, and it is talking to payroll processors in the hope of getting them on board. Across the border in Canada, Wagepoint has already teamed up with VirtEx to integrate bitcoin payments into its payroll services.

According to a Bloomberg poll carried out in 2013, bitcoin is not as popular among regular folk. The poll found that just 42% of Americans could correctly identify what bitcoin was, while 46% said they did not know what the currency was all about. A further 6% though it was an Xbox game, and another 6% mistook bitcoin for an iPhone app.

What's more, it is possible that a disproportionate number of bitcoin enthusiasts chose to take part in the Tech in Motion survey. After all, more than 17,000 people chose not to fill in their questionnaires.

Still, according to public relations outfit Shift Communications, Tech in Motion's membership covers a wide range of tech firms, from software developers to infrastructure companies and hardware makers.

Shift Communications account executive David Hefferman also points out that Truth in Motion carried out some "rough polling" in each city where its members are based, hence the numbers should be fairly consistent.

Bitcoin Image via Shutterstock