Virginia tech firm offers staff option to get paid in Bitcoin, Ether

Sequoia Holdings — a software development services provider, not to be confused with the well-known venture capital firm Sequoia Capital — is offering its staff the option to set aside a portion of their salary and invest it in cryptocurrency.

Sequoia Holdings is based in Reston, Virginia and provides engineering and analytic solutions to the United States national security sector, including the intelligence, defense and homeland security departments. It is also, notably, an employee-owned firm, which suggests the optional integration of cryptocurrency into salary arrangements could be a good barometer of popular staff sentiment.

The company's employees will be able to choose to defer a portion of their salary and have it invested in either Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) or Ether (ETH). While Sequoia Holdings draws an analogy with widespread 401(k) retirement savings plans for other U.S. employees, the difference here is that the deferral will, in this case, be calculated after tax deductions.

Sequoia Holdings does not indicate what portion of employees' salary can be deferred if chosen, nor does it name the third-party payroll processing firm that will be responsible for withholding the taxes and converting the remainder into the chosen cryptocurrency. All crypto savings will be held in a digital wallet that will be managed by this same third-party payroll processor.

In a statement for the company, Sequoia Holdings's co-founder and CEO, T. Richard Stroup Jr., said:

“Many of our employees are enthusiastic supporters of cryptocurrency, and we're happy to help them gain exposure to this trillion-dollar asset class. [...] Cryptocurrency has emerged as an important alternative to traditional investments like stocks and bonds.”

Cointelegraph readers will remember the high-profile story from December 2020 when several news outlets claimed that National Football League player Russell Okung was choosing to receive half of his salary in Bitcoin. After a clarification, a spokesperson for his employer, the Carolina Panthers, confirmed that the player's salary was not being paid directly in the cryptocurrency, even though Okung himself has hinted that he may indeed be choosing to invest a significant portion of his earnings in crypto himself.