The war for crypto talent

Cryp­tocur­ren­cies aren’t just cre­at­ing buzz – they’re cre­at­ing jobs. 

The tech­nol­o­gy might be rel­a­tive­ly new, but it’s one of the world’s fastest-grow­ing indus­tries. What’s more, it’s a huge draw for those who believe that decen­tralised finan­cial sys­tems can change the world. For these employ­ees, the evolv­ing indus­try offers job oppor­tu­ni­ties on a scale not seen since the emer­gence of the inter­net in the mid-1990s. 

The surge in demand for cryp­to tal­ent was fuelled by the grow­ing inter­est of invest­ment heavy­weights like Black­Rock and Gold­man Sachs, which in turn helped spark new inter­est from com­pa­nies in tech­nol­o­gy and finance. There is now a new recog­ni­tion of blockchain – the tech­nol­o­gy that under­pins cryp­tocur­ren­cies – as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments of this gen­er­a­tion. 

Banks and oth­er finan­cial insti­tu­tions are scram­bling to open cryp­to depart­ments to meet their clients’ demands, says Chris Mason, co-founder of pri­vate tutor­ing and research hub InCrypto.UK, not­ing that “there isn’t enough skilled cryp­to tal­ent to go around. For those who’ve made the move to under­stand blockchain and realise that this space will grow at an unprece­dent­ed pace, it’s very hard to not want to be involved.”

Mason says his com­pa­ny has seen a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of peo­ple from the more tra­di­tion­al finan­cial world seek­ing pri­vate tuition on cryp­tocur­ren­cies. 

“Inter­est­ing­ly, many of them are ‘cryp­to scep­tics’ who feel they have no choice but to get edu­cat­ed on the sub­ject for fear of being left behind.”

From engi­neers to mar­keters, the cryp­tocur­ren­cy boom has cre­at­ed jobs that span a vari­ety of skills. The major­i­ty of job open­ings have focused on pro­gram­mers and soft­ware devel­op­ers, with many list­ings call­ing for “hard skills” like Java, machine learn­ing, Python, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and C/C++. 

But there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for non-techies. With the rapid emer­gence of decen­tralised finance, a large num­ber of jobs have opened up for those with a legal or com­pli­ance back­ground. Com­pa­nies are also seek­ing help in areas like mar­ket­ing and PR: US cryp­to exchange Coin­base, for exam­ple, is now recruit­ing edi­to­r­i­al tal­ent to build its own media oper­a­tion. 

Finan­cial insti­tu­tions are the most pro­lif­ic recruiters, pre­dom­i­nant­ly banks and invest­ment funds. How­ev­er, vir­tu­al­ly any organ­i­sa­tion look­ing to expand or build new projects in the cryp­to space is effec­tive­ly join­ing a war for cryp­to tal­ent. 

From a hobby to a career

Although bank­ing and fin­tech are the con­ven­tion­al indus­tries from which many launch a cryp­to career, many have entered the busi­ness after devel­op­ing a gen­uine pas­sion for the sec­tor, per­haps as a hob­by. 

Katharine Wooller is man­ag­ing direc­tor in the UK and Ire­land for cryp­to wealth plat­form Dacxi — her third blockchain busi­ness. Hav­ing first pur­chased cryp­to three years ago, she went on to cre­ate the “Women Who Cryp­to” move­ment, which encour­ages women to embrace cryp­to assets as a gen­uine wealth builder.

When she’s recruit­ing, Wooller says she pri­ori­tis­es those with a gen­uine inter­est in cryp­to, who’ve been learn­ing and invest­ing in their spare time as a side hus­tle, over some­one with a tra­di­tion­al bank­ing or IT back­ground.  

“The indus­try is so new that a hunger for knowl­edge and an open mind tend to be com­mon traits, over and above a long CV spe­cial­is­ing in cryp­to,” Wooller says. 

For Wooller, the industry’s biggest chal­lenges are the rate of growth and the speed of change. 

“As with all cryp­to busi­ness­es, we are in the ear­ly stages of adop­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy glob­al­ly and much of my day is about edu­cat­ing retail investors and tra­di­tion­al finan­cial busi­ness­es. You can expect, there­fore, to spend a lot of time in edu­ca­tor mode,” she says.

The potential of blockchain

While the cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket and blockchain tech­nol­o­gy are intrin­si­cal­ly linked, the lat­ter is being used in a much broad­er range of appli­ca­tions. This opens up career options for tal­ent from an increas­ing­ly diverse range of back­grounds.

Tama­ra Haasen made an uncon­ven­tion­al jour­ney from polit­i­cal sci­ence and law — via stud­ies in cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and emo­tion­al IQ – to become chief of staff at blockchain engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny IOHK, high­light­ing the grow­ing inter­sec­tion between tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple.

Gov­er­nance, law and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence are increas­ing­ly core skills in a sec­tor that relies on par­tic­i­pa­tion and con­sen­sus among thou­sands of peo­ple across the globe, just to have a func­tion­ing net­work and prod­uct, Haasen says. 

“Cre­at­ing self-gov­ern­ing finan­cial sys­tems that oper­ate eth­i­cal­ly with­out the need for exter­nal reg­u­la­tors requires exper­tise in every­thing from rela­tion­ship man­age­ment to behav­iour­al psy­chol­o­gy.” 

The future dream blockchain CV will like­ly belong to some­one with skills in peo­ple man­age­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion, an under­stand­ing of behav­iour­al psy­chol­o­gy like game the­o­ry and a pas­sion for democ­ra­tis­ing finan­cial and social sys­tems. This is what Haasen finds most reward­ing about her job: help­ing blockchain deliv­er on its orig­i­nal promise of a peo­ple-pow­ered finan­cial and social sys­tem that can pro­vide eco­nom­ic iden­ti­ties to the 1.7 bil­lion unbanked peo­ple around the world.

A risk worth taking

Ivan Soto-Wright began his career in port­fo­lio con­struc­tion before found­ing the cryp­tocur­ren­cy pay­ment solu­tions provider Moon­Pay, dri­ven by a fas­ci­na­tion with the evolv­ing sec­tor and its poten­tial to democ­ra­tise the finan­cial sys­tem. 

Launched in 2018, the team com­pris­es peo­ple from a diverse range of back­grounds, includ­ing tech giants Google and Ama­zon, ear­ly-stage tech star­tups and indus­tries like fin­tech, ecom­merce and soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice. 

“To be suc­cess­ful in the cryp­to field, you have to want to push bound­aries,” he says. “Not just accept­ing the sta­tus quo, but imag­in­ing what could be and then mak­ing the imag­ined pos­si­ble.”

Cryp­tocur­ren­cies remain high­ly volatile: the recent roller­coast­er ride in the val­ue of bit­coin and doge­coin are a case in point. For some finance pro­fes­sion­als, the rep­u­ta­tion­al risk of mov­ing into the world of dig­i­tal assets is high. Still, many are will­ing to take the risk.

“The cryp­tocur­ren­cy space has always been volatile, but that’s only look­ing at one facet of it,” says Soto-Wright, not­ing the sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties to democ­ra­tise finance, pro­vide ser­vices to the unbanked and under­banked, and improve finan­cial sys­tems in terms of cost, speed and secu­ri­ty. 

“That’s what dri­ves so many peo­ple to con­sid­er a career in this sec­tor. It real­ly is the future of finance.”