I would suspect no remote work hire is a cold hire. Most of the times it is someone which has previously worked on-site and shown to be trustworthy enough to manage themselves when working remotely.
So yes, getting companies who don't know you, and will hire you for remote work based on an interview only is rare.
As someone who's worked about 50% remote in the past year, this is not true. I've worked for companies in the US, Mexico, the UK, while based in the Netherlands. One common factor though is they were mostly people already in my network, so there is definitely a trust element - but not a "face to face" trust element necessarily.
It is rare, but it does happen. Over the last 4 years I've help to build up a 10 person development team (from 3) having never met any of the candidates before hiring them.
I didn't meet anyone else from the company until a year after I had already been working here.
The interview process is just needs to be fairly rigorous.
Our preference is to hire within Canada because of:
* Timezones
* Government incentives
* Payment/Tax/Accounting hassles have already been sorted
But that doesn't mean we'll pass up great candidates in other locations.
So yes, getting companies who don't know you, and will hire you for remote work based on an interview only is rare.