Posted on 09/27/2017 10:17:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Landing a job in the world of cryptocurrency has become a lot easier over the past few months. Given the surge in the popularity of Bitcoin and most tokens, that is not necessarily surprising. As it turns out, there are two main reasons as to why the number of job openings in this industry has increased exponentially. Whether or not these trends will remain in place a year from now remains to be seen, though.
1. Initial Coin Offerings
Although most people have no love lost for the ICO industry, no one can deny a lot of jobs are created as a result. Every single initial coin offering needs specific individuals to handle legal matters, PR, development, and so forth. Although these teams are usually rather small at first, successful companies can quickly expand to put a few dozen people to work. Not all companies will succeed, but in the short term, they create a lot of job openings.
Especially now that governments and regulators all over the world are cracking down on ICOs, having a legal team on board becomes even more important. No one wants their token to be labeled as a security when that is not the case whatsoever. Moreover, companies must adhere to specific guidelines when it comes to keeping money safe, protecting investors, and offering transparency in general.
Everyone knows that ICO projects have successfully raised millions of dollars in short order. Bringing a vision to life is not easy, and requires a team of passionate developers to make things work. Using blockchain technology for any specific purpose does not happen magically, and without the proper staff on hand it may never be successful. There is a lot of untapped potential for blockchain technology, but it remains to be seen how things play out in this particular job market.
2. Cryptocurrency Value Appreciation
Even though established projects such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are open source, the price increase of both major currencies has created a few new jobs as well. This is no longer an early adopter-driven industry by any means, but is now a mainstream business model which will create a lot of new opportunities waiting to be explored in the near future. Everyone wants to be a part of the cryptocurrency revolution, by the looks of things.
One of the main reasons why more people want to land a job in the cryptocurrency sector is relatively high salaries. Most cryptocurrency startups pay 10% or more than the market average for the tech industry as a whole. This shows these companies are willing to properly reward talent, assuming said talent lives up to expectations. Additionally, workers gain remote flexibility. We live in an era where working remotely is becoming the new norm. Cryptocurrency startups provide that option first and foremost these days.
Perhaps the biggest reason why Bitcoin and Ethereum-related companies hire so many people is because they don’t want to be left behind by their competitors. More specifically, all companies combined are looking to fill over 3,500 job openings on AngelList alone. That is a spectacular number, considering how many people consider cryptocurrency to be a niche market in 2017. Most of these jobs relate to technical openings, of course, but there is also a growing demand for customer support staff, PR people, designers, marketing, and content creators.
A cryptocurrency is essentially a shared ledger secured by cryptography. Researchers have been trying to create digital money for more than 40 years. The main sticking point is that there needed to be a central authority to issue the money and then to validate transactions to prevent counterfeiting and spending of duplicate money. The government shut down several companies that attempted to implement a digital money system.
In 2008, a white paper was published describing a money system that could issue money and provide the transaction clearing function without requiring a central authority. The system described, Bitcoin, was put into operation on January 3, 2009 and has been running ever since. As there is no central company running the system (it is a peer to peer network), there is no way for government to easily shut it down.
Over the last nine years, a lot of infrastructure has grown up around cryptocurrencies. There are currency exchanges that allow converting between government money and cryptocurrencies (there are many of them now beside Bitcoin), payment processors to allow businesses to accept crypto for goods and services, etc.
While the initial implementations of these shared ledgers was for digital currencies, the ledgers can be used to account for other things. Digital assets representing ownership of other things of value like stocks or real estate are being implemented.
An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is one such digital asset. You can think of the ICO as representing shares in a company, and they are being used to raise money for start ups. As you might imagine, the SEC and other government regulators are taking a hard look at ICOs as well as non-government issued currencies.
So that’s a bare bones description. There’s lots of detail we could get into. I can try to answer questions if there are any.
On Sept 22, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Balaji Srinivasan, who said that "The Blockchain Is the Internet of Money.” I’d link to it, but it’s behind a paywall. On the subject of China’s recent actions on cryptocurrencies, Srinivasan pointed out that China is something of a technocracy; people with serious tech chops are actually influential in the government. Whereas in the US, well, we’re more of an ignorocracy. :-/He thinks the upshot will be that China will come out with its own digital currency linked to the currency of China, that there will be a competition.
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