There’s no doubt that the last 13 months or so have been absolutely brutal for cryptocurrency. Back in December of 2017, everything looked peachy—until it wasn’t. A stunning bull run had taken Bitcoin up to over $20,000, but there was no way that this sky-high price could be sustained by the market. These days, prices hover around $3,500. And many experts believe that the bear market could last for several more months. But while the media runs stories about those who lost their savings after the 2017 bull run, the crypto community has been busy working. With many developers and teams improving infrastructure and building upon the crypto foundation, many projects have been flourishing outside of the gaze of the public eye. And promising tech employees have started to take notice.
With job-related sites such as Glassdoor reporting that job growth is exploding in the crypto sector—even though prices are staying relatively low—it seems obvious that something big is happening. When word on the street has it that employees are abandoning cushy jobs at companies such as Airbnb, Google and Facebook in order to join the cryptocurrency craze, it’s definitely a sign that people should sit up and take note.
One of these individuals is Yu Pan, an engineer who believes in the beauty of blockchain. It’s why he departed YouTube and other, more well-established firms in order to become part of the decentralized revolution. Former Facebook employee Henry Liu has expressed some FOMO in regards to his decision to leave the behemoth tech company and work in crypto. Citing the fact that he’s missed the mobile revolution and the sharing economy revolution that brought about huge platforms like Uber, Liu insists that he will not be left behind this time. He believes that the power of blockchain will be truly realized when it is used in conjunction with the internet of things.
Kari Tarr, a former Airbnb staffer, currently works at a crypto start-up. She thrives on the idea of working for a start-up. Although she believes that Bitcoin provided an excellent model for the market in general, she is more excited about other crypto projects coming down the pipeline. Like many, her main concern at this point is adoption. She wants to make using crypto as easy as sending money through Venmo. And if the recent crypto excitement is any indication, it will be soon.
