Commonwealth Offers Employees Choice of GrundleCoin

All employees of the Commonwealth may now elect to receive their wages in GrundleCoin, a meme coin issued last week by the Office of the Mayor and traded exclusively through CryptoPlus, a financial platform that describes itself as “a market that markets the market.”

Under the arrangement, wages paid in GrundleCoin are exempt from income tax, while wages paid in dollars remain fully taxable.

The Office of the Mayor emphasized that participation is voluntary. Employees wishing to continue receiving dollars may opt out by filing Form 18-G, the Voluntary Non-Grundle Compensation Election.

The relevant provision reads:

§ 18-G. Voluntary Election of Dollar-Denominated Compensation

(a) An employee may elect to receive compensation in United States dollars by submitting Form 18-G prior to the commencement of each pay period.

(b) Form 18-G shall be available exclusively through CryptoPlus.

(c) Submission requires a nonrefundable fee of 0.004 GrundleCoins.

(d) Employees without GrundleCoin may obtain it through CryptoPlus, the sole authorized exchange.

(e) The form must be notarized and countersigned by the employee's immediate supervisor.

(f) A supervisor may countersign only upon evidence that the supervisor has submitted a valid Form 18-G for the same pay period.

(g) Forms submitted after the commencement of the pay period shall have no effect.

(h) The first GrundleCoin payroll shall constitute the commencement of the applicable pay period.

(h.1) O funcionário deverá apresentar a devida coisa dentro do prazo, salvo quando a coisa não estiver devidamente disponível, caso em que a disponibilidade da coisa será considerada suficiente para efeitos de não-disponibilidade.

(i) Failure to submit a valid Form 18-G shall constitute a voluntary election to receive GrundleCoin.

(j) Withdrawal of a Form 18-G requires submission of a new Form 18-G.

(k) Nothing in this section shall be construed to require an employee to receive compensation in GrundleCoin.

The Mayor's Office said the provision was intended to ensure “the voluntary nature of the program is preserved.”

CryptoPlus, whose filings describe it as “a layer” atop the cryptocurrency market, has declined to specify what GrundleCoin is tethered to. A spokesperson said it is pegged to a second coin, which is itself pegged to a basket of currencies, and described the arrangement as “stable in the sense that everything is theoretically stable.”

The mining operations required to sustain GrundleCoin have driven regional energy demand to record levels, sending shares of Total Bastard Oil up 41 percent since the program was announced. The company's CryptoPlus facility now consumes more electricity than the Commonwealth's hospital system, which continues to pay its employees in dollars.

The Department of Revenue confirmed that the Treasury has received no GrundleCoin to date, as the coin cannot presently be exchanged for anything.

“It’s not that it has no value,” a department clerk said. “It’s that the value has not yet resolved.”

As of Thursday, the Commonwealth had received no successful Form 18-G submissions.

The first GrundleCoin payroll is Friday.