Based on the legal consultations received by Lawyer Shao from newcomers or new employees in the coin circle in recent years, they often have complex emotions about job opportunities in the Web3 industry. How to describe this emotion? Fear, anxiety, anticipation, yearning, helplessness, confusion… In short, there are various types of emotions.
They seem to vaguely feel that the business their company is engaged in seems to be not allowed by the country. But they also feel that since the leaders have said that what they are doing is legal and compliant, they are struggling between continuing to work or resigning immediately. In order to dispel this fear of the unknown, they chose to consult a lawyer.
Not all Web3 job positions have monthly incomes of tens of thousands or even higher. Some ordinary operational, customer service, or assistant positions may only have a few thousand yuan in income, which is not much different from traditional industries. In other words, not all workers in the coin circle are seeking "wealth and danger".
At the end of each consultation, after answering legal questions, I also give them some advice on career planning or professional development, and I also ask if they would consider resigning if the company's business is indeed risky. Most of the answers are: "I'll wait and see. If I find something wrong, I'll withdraw!" OK, after all, knowing the possible risk points, they won't be blindly afraid anymore, which is good.
This series of articles will focus on the issues of concern to workers in the coin circle and will be updated irregularly.
Today, let's talk about the issue of wages that all workers care about.
By Shao Shiwei, Lawyer
01. Paying wages in tokens seems to be fine?
Since we are in the Web3 era, it seems normal to pay wages in the form of cryptocurrency. Of course, not all Web3 companies only pay employees in virtual currency. Some pay in RMB, some pay in mainstream stablecoins like USDT, some pay in project tokens, and some allow employees to choose the type of income they receive, and can be paid in a combination of RMB and virtual currency.
Are the above forms of wage payment legal?
According to the following regulations, it can be seen that paying wages in virtual currency violates legal provisions and should be deemed invalid.
"Interim Provisions on Wage Payment"
Article 5: Wages shall be paid to workers in legal tender and shall not be replaced by physical objects or negotiable securities.
"People's Bank of China Law"
Article 16: The legal tender of the People's Republic of China is the Renminbi.
"Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risks of Speculation in Virtual Currency Trading"
Virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal tender. Virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether do not have legal tender status and should not and cannot be used as currency in the market.
Whether the legal relationship is valid or invalid is a concern for legal professionals, but for companies and employees, they do not care whether paying/receiving virtual currency is invalid, they only care whether they owe each other money and whether they can receive the money, after all, for people in the coin circle, coins are equivalent to money.
Therefore, in practice, if both parties agree to pay wages in virtual currency, what labor arbitration disputes will arise and how will the court rule?
02. Common types of disputes
1. If both parties agree to pay in USDT and there is a dispute over whether the wages have been paid, how will the court rule?
The court determined that the company should pay a total of 30,000 yuan in wages to the worker for a certain month. The worker only acknowledged receiving 10,000 yuan, and the company claimed that the remaining 20,000 was paid in virtual currency. However, the worker did not acknowledge that the virtual currency received was wages, so the court ruled that the company still needs to make up the 20,000 to the employee.
Court's view:
Article 50 of the "Labor Law of the People's Republic of China" clearly stipulates that wages shall be paid to workers in the form of currency on a monthly basis. Article 8 of the "Regulations on Foreign Exchange Administration of the People's Republic of China" stipulates that foreign currency is prohibited from circulating within the territory of the People's Republic of China and shall not be used for pricing and settlement, except as otherwise provided by the state. In this case, the payment of wages by Atomic Chain Company in virtual currency violates legal provisions, and Zhang Yingchun explicitly denies that the above amount is payment of wages, so the court does not accept the company's claim1.
2. If the company promises to give employees token rewards but fails to do so, what can be done?
The company promised to give employee Xiao Cao 30,000 IOB tokens, equivalent to 600,000 yuan, but actually did not pay. Xiao Cao filed a lawsuit against the company requesting the company to pay 600,000 yuan in token value. However, the court did not support this.
Court's view:
From the WeChat chat records provided by the defendant, the legal representative of the plaintiff did promise to give employees tokens as rewards, but did not explain under what conditions the tokens could be cashed. From the evidence provided by the defendant, although the plaintiff did pay tokens to other resigned employees, they were not actually cashed at a discounted value. Moreover, tokens are virtual currency, and their value is uncertain. The value of the tokens listed in the table is at most an estimate at that time. The defendant's request for the plaintiff to pay the IOB token at a discounted value is not supported by the court2.
3. Can unpaid wages be claimed in virtual currency?
No.
This should be easy to understand. Wages should be paid in legal tender, and virtual currency does not have legal tender status. Even if there has been a practice of the company paying in virtual currency throughout the duration of the labor relationship and both parties have no objections, when filing a lawsuit, the employee can only claim in RMB. Similarly, the company cannot claim to pay the employee in virtual currency3.
03. Lawyer Shao's advice
The above cases and judgment results are for reference only and cannot be fully extrapolated. The reasons are as follows:
Although such disputes are common in practice, few employees file lawsuits in court and have public judgment disclosures for various reasons (such as management issues, concerns about their own criminal risks, etc.). What we can see can only represent the views of the court or the presiding judge, and without sufficient data support, it is not universal;
Our country is not a precedent law country, and the facts of each case are different;
Regulations related to virtual currency are only scattered in various notices and announcements, and there are no clear legislative regulations, so there are legal application gaps in labor disputes involving virtual currency;
Even in ordinary labor dispute cases, there are some subjective views on the determination of facts and legal application by different regions, different jurisdictions within the same region, and different judges within the same jurisdiction.
Therefore, for specific cases, it is still recommended to consult a professional lawyer.
1 (2019) Jing 0105 Min Chu 63366
2 (2019) Hu 0101 Min Chu 16673
3 (2022) Jing 03 Min Zhong 12380
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