Start-up job site AngelList, which acts as a match making platform between angel investors and start-up businesses, has published data which shows that the number of jobs related with cryptocurrencies doubled in the first quarter of 2018.
The data shows that the number of jobs on offer climbed dramatically through January from under 500, to over 800, despite the price of bitcoin shedding around 9,000 dollars of its value in that month. As prices continued to sink through February and March, so too the upward trend in job listings continued, with numbers by the end of March at over 1,000.
This counterintuitive trend shows that as many FOMO investors exited the crypto space at the beginning of the year, interest from the tech side has not faded. AngelList explained, “the price run-up of bitcoin and ethereum in 2017 [attracted] more people into the space for the first time, and the level of interest from the investor community is also at a record high.”
They also cited the ICO boom as being a major driving force. The novel funding strategy has shown that it can yield extremely high returns and so have inspired more and more start-ups to try them as well.
“The team behind Filecoin recently broke the record for the largest ICO in history, raising $257m to build a decentralized file storage system,” stated AngelList, adding, “as cryptocurrency companies are growing, raising larger amounts of money at higher valuations, so are their hiring needs for finding top talent.”
AngelList noted further that it isn’t just software engineers and developers who are in demand. Positions which require non-technical backgrounds such as those in marketing, customer support and business development also need to be filled, with firm managers seeing the value of having workers with developed soft skills on their teams, in order to have fully functioning enterprises as they grow.
The fact that jobs in the crypto-space continued to proliferate through the bear market of the first quarter shows that price is not the ultimate indicator of interest in crypto. As FOMO investors pulled out as quickly as they had piled in through the winter, they allowed the foot to be taken off the gas (aka hype-) pedal so that reality could catch back up with the price. The bear market of Q1 of 2018 has forced the supply side to get its collective head down again and develop the tech and the product; for that, as the data shows, they continue to need workers.
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