Recent enthusiasm surrounding the cryptocurrency sector apparently hasn’t led to more hiring within the industry.
In fact, crypto job posting on LinkedIn fell 57% between December 2022 and 2023, Bloomberg News reported Friday (Jan. 5), citing data from LinkedIn.
However, there are signs that things could be turning around. For example, the report also noted that CryptocurrencyJobs.co, a jobs board that charges for job posts, enjoyed one of its best months of revenue for the year in December, according to founder Daniel Adler.
“A few teams may have opened up new roles, but I also think it’s teams using up their hiring budgets to pre-buy job packs and so on,” Adler said. “There seems to be more optimism in the space. I think things will become more clear in the next few weeks.”
Coinbase, the country’s largest crypto exchange, had more than 70 openings on its website, the report said, while Gemini listed 60.
However, Bloomberg added, the market’s recovery will depend largely on whether the price of bitcoin stays up and whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approves the investment of exchange-traded funds into bitcoin.
As PYMNTS wrote last week, the “investment world seems to be holding its collective breath,” as it waits for the SEC’s approval. Anticipation “has helped underpin a rally in bitcoin since the waning months of 2023.”
However, that report said, while there may be a sense that embracing ETFs will usher in greater comfort with using bitcoin as a means of conducting commerce, it may take some time for people to get to that level. And it may never be as mainstream as crypto enthusiasts want.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “The U.S. Crypto Consumer: Cryptocurrency Use in Online and in-Store Purchases” shows that bitcoin remains the go-to name for many crypto enthusiasts, as it is used by nearly 80% of consumers who hold crypto to transact.
“But only 16% of overall consumers have owned cryptos. Of that 42-million-person pool, 16.1 million used crypto to transact, which implies that 6% of the population (overall) has desired to use crypto to buy things and acted on that desire,” PYMNTS wrote. “The promised tsunami has not emerged — and one wonders when, or if, it ever will.”