GMO Internet, which operates a range of web-related businesses including finance, online advertising and internet infrastructure, will start paying up to 100,000 yen (£660/$890) monthly by Bitcoin to its employees in Japan from February this year.
“Employees can receive salaries by Bitcoin if they want to,” company spokeswoman Harumi Ishii said. “We hope to improve our own literacy of virtual currency by actually using it.”
The offer will be open to around 4,000 employees of the GMO group in Japan, she said.
Bitcoin is the first, and the biggest, "cryptocurrency" – a decentralized digital currency. Bitcoin has been far more important until now for the dark economy than it has for most legitimate users due to the lack of any central authority. Decentralization eliminates the possibility of regulation and provides anonymity to users, which makes it very attractive to the criminal world. In recent times, however, it has become better known to legitimate businesses and is beginning to be adopted more widely.
If you want to know more about cryptocurrencies, you can get a good overview here: "What is Bitcoin?"
(https://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/)