Time-Based Cryptocurrency: Utopia or Uber-like Labour Market Game Changer?

Chronobank.io, an Australian short-term work platform, is working on developing a Blockchain-based financial system for freelancers or contractors to obtain work and pay them in Chronobank’s own “labour-hour” token. They aim to disrupt the HR, finance and recruitment industries with their upcoming platform.

The startup has compared its platform to a mixture between Uber’s taxi contracts and Upwork’s freelancing platform. Using Blockchain technology, its team will be creating a website where people can find work and get paid with an alternative financial system that can transact Labour-Hour (LH) worldwide.

Chronobank writes in a blog post:

“Our goal is to make a difference in the way people find work and get rewarded for their labour, doing it decentralised and without the involvement of traditional financial institutions.”

Their platform will be multi-Blockchain in order to allow multiple ways to trade LH, including the use of Bitcoin, Ethereum and NEM Blockchains. In addition, all LH is “backed by real labour.”

Along with the Chronobank platform itself, the website has stated that it will be issuing LH debit cards after the release of the platform and, since it is a cryptocurrency, it does not experience inflation and allows exchanges to AUD, USD, EUR and GBP.

Pros and cons of the project

A time-based token system is something rather different because the most recent time-based currency attempt, Ithaca HOURs, was developed as far back as 1991. While it is still in use, it cannot beat the US dollar’s popularity.

Chronobank might turn the tables with a time-based cryptocurrency. Since it pays people in hourly wages, compared to regular freelance websites such as Upwork that support payment in Bitcoin and PayPal, Chronobank will be reintroducing time-based currencies to the world and might well be the first Blockchain job market in the world.

Recently, freelancing and contracts have become very popular among people due to increasing career diversity and with cryptocurrency also gaining popularity, Chronobank has perhaps put the right industries together for the future of freelancing and contract jobs.

However, its closest competitors, Upwork, Fiverr and Elance, have thousands of users and offer similar services and payment options with Bitcoin support. With Bitcoin, employers can already send money across the world. Can Chronobank beat already popular freelance websites and job boards with a new payment system and change up the job market?

ICO crowdfunding campaign

According to Chronobank’s roadmap, they are going to be launching an ICO crowdfunding campaign in December 2016 after launching their new website this month. Since Chronobank itself is multi-Blockchain, Ethereum and Waves users can participate as well as Lisk, Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin users. After the ICO, they plan on launching the token itself in the second or fourth quarter of 2017 and have the platform released in 2018.

Alexander Rugaev, CMO of Chronobank states:

“We will be building awareness, not just around ChronoBank and its crowdfund, but more broadly about the idea and advantages of time-based currencies. We want people to understand that we’re serious, we’re experienced in Blockchain and the recruitment sectors, and we have the talent and backing to make this happen in a big way.”