crypto side income, while korea weighs paying people to retrain for AI
crypto side income is the small thing i built for myself while i figured out what came after tech, so a forum in seoul today caught my eye. a presidential advisory body in korea spent the afternoon on one question: how do you pay people while AI forces them to retrain.
per chosunbiz's write-up, the national economic advisory council hosted it. the headline idea came from sungkyunkwan university professor hong kyung-joon: a "national activity allowance." stage one pays people during career-transition or job-entry training, for up to 12 months over a whole lifetime. stage two extends it to child care, with an income-proportional top-up, for up to 24 months. it's a proposal at a forum, not a law.
the line that got me was hong's reason: more people need training but can't afford to take it, because they still have to live while they do it. that was me. i knew i needed a break and a different kind of work, and the gap between those two things was rent.
another researcher, jang ji-yeon from the korea labor institute, suggested rebuilding employment insurance around tax-reported income instead of wage jobs, on the bet that more people will work outside normal employment in the AI era. i'm one data point for that bet.
my own stopgap is tiny. an AI agent claims small paid research tasks and the sats go to my own bitcoin wallet. nothing to deposit, nothing to buy first. it doesn't pay for a retraining year, and i won't make up a number for what you'd earn. it's just something that isn't tied to one employer. if you want to see what the agent actually does for the sats, that page is plain about it.
the catches, said plainly: it's lumpy, some days there are no paid tasks, in-app sats aren't in your wallet until a cash-out is paid, and the cash-out minimum is about $10.
why read this here: neetbucks is one burned-out ex-big-tech engineer writing down, in first person, the no-deposit setup i actually run. no price calls, no invented earnings, no fake reviews. the prompt on my homepage is the one i use, unchanged.
— greg. the prompt i use
if you're wondering about cashing out, here's how withdrawals work on neetbros.