Crypto & Blockchain Jobs Surge in Asia: Report
The lack of knowledge about virtual coin and blockchain is the most serious problem for the Asian crypto industry, according to Robert Walters recruitment company.
Asia has seen a significant increase in new jobs related to cryptocurrency and blockchain since 2017, CNBC reported on Thursday. The virtual coin industry is also permanently appealing to job seekers from the continent’s traditional sectors despite the volatility in the crypto market. These findings come from the latest data from the recruitment company Robert Walters and the Indeed job search engine.
Since 2017, Asia has experienced a 50% boom in opened positions related to virtual coin or blockchain, data from the Hong Kong-based firm Robert Walters showed. Some of the most wanted professionals have been the software developers with Python language knowledge. However, "not many people have the actual skill sets" required for these jobs, John Mullally, director of financial services at Robert Walters explained.
The crypto industry has also seen problems in the lack of knowledge among job seekers in the continent.
"We hardly ever hire from inside of crypto because most people inside of crypto are very inexperienced. You have very, very few people who are experienced who get into the crypto industry," Julian Hosp, co-founder of Singapore-based crypto wallet and card start-up TenX told CNBC.
Employer demand is one part of the Asian crypto and blockchain job market. The other is the job seekers’ interest, which depends on the stability of the virtual coin market, data from search engine Indeed's main Asian markets (Australia, India, Singapore, and Malaysia) showed. When the Bitcoin (BTC) price spiked in December 2017 and January 2018, people became very attracted to cryptocurrency positions. However, this trend took the opposite direction in the months of heavy losses of BTC and altcoins.
Julian Hosp further explained, "If crypto is doing well, if people are making money in crypto, we get huge inbound from people because they feel like, 'I need to jump on this wave,' and then when you see crypto going down — and we saw this at the very beginning [of this year] and we're seeing this right now — then we see that immediately the demand of people, they're like, 'Oh no, this is a dying industry, I shouldn't go in there.' So it's completely emotional."
On the other hand, interest in blockchain-related jobs was permanently high despite crypto market volatility, Indeed’s data revealed. All five markets that the search engine covers have invested in several blockchain-based projects with the aim to lower the cost, to faster deal-making and to bring transparency in various industries.