industry

Bitcoiner Jobs Wants To Get You Working Full Time In Bitcoin

18/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

A new service is aiming to bridge the gap between employees who want to find work in the Bitcoin industry and employers at Bitcoin companies.

We spoke with the two people who are part of the team behind the popular website, Bitcoiner Jobs, geared toward the orange-pilled workforce. Nathan Dennis and Cory Klippsten cocreated Bitcoiner Jobs with the goal of connecting Bitcoiner employers with Bitcoiner employees. Many Bitcoiners are interested in making the leap from the fiat-mining jobs and finding a career in Bitcoin. Often, those people are unsure of where to start. It’s not common to find a college program in “Bitcoin Studies” churning out candidates, and most companies are looking for prospective candidates to demonstrate proof of work as opposed to having fancy credentials anyway.

Working full time in Bitcoin can mean various things and not all roles are related to software development or coding. This author found work through the website as an editor at Bitcoin Magazine. Categories on the Bitcoiner Jobs website range from engineering to marketing to finance to legal to customer operations to logistics. There are a wide variety of opportunities for those interested in working both remotely and locally. Bitcoiner Jobs provided us with statistics for their site below:

898 jobs posted
3,530 direct job applications using native forms
140+ employer accounts approved
2,580 job alerts created for their weekly jobs letter
1,269 job seeker accounts signed up

We sat down with Klippsten and Dennis to learn more about the story of Bitcoiner Jobs and how they plan to continue its growth.

What prompted you to start Bitcoiner Jobs?

Klippsten: Like many of the best products, we built something that we needed, and it turned out others needed it too. We were getting so many job applicants in the first half of 2021 that it was turning into a part-time job to help them try to find roles across the many companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem. I needed a platform to facilitate that and take me out of it.

My first attempt to scale was posting candidate profiles as Twitter threads, and that quickly resulted in a few matches. Serendipitously, within a week or two I was randomly introduced to the CEO of a SaaS [software as a service] company specializing in niche job boards as a service, and it fit the bill perfectly. The next step was to find someone who could build what we needed, and I was lucky to find Nathan in the Bitcoin Twitter community. He quickly outpaced a couple of other candidates in terms of ideas and output, and built a beautiful first version for launch. After we got to know each other better, it was obvious that he could add a lot of value at Swan in addition to Bitcoiner Jobs, so by the end of Q3 we agreed to roll both Nathan and the site under Swan.

I wanted to do this on the side, and Nathan just took the reins and was absolutely crushing it and delivering a beautiful work product and was passionate about it. He had human resources experience, so he understood the pain points and exactly where to spend time, so we just had a very natural collaboration right out of the gate. It moved really, really, really fast. Once we had Nathan in place and the SaaS tool, we were able to get a product out pretty quickly. We determined the branding, Bitcoiner Jobs, which fit with this message that Bitcoin’s going to be fine; Bitcoiners need lots of help.

What’s been the reception among the employers and potential employees?

Dennis: The response has been great from both sides. Employers have shared that one of their biggest challenges in recruitment is finding candidates that are aligned with their mission; Bitcoin has fixed this, so it’s no surprise that the majority of Bitcoin projects and companies — around 140 of them — have signed up with Bitcoiner Jobs to find talent as our site meticulously filters out any non-Bitcoin companies. Another key feature that has been helpful is we do not charge companies to post their jobs and they have unlimited slots. This is very important for startups as they have more important things to be allocating budget to and in most cases would end up having to pick one or two jobs and pay hundreds of dollars per post with no guaranteed value-add. As Gigi says, information wants to be free and job posts are just information that lives on company websites. This is also extremely important for open-source projects looking for more contributors.

For employees, providing a place for all Bitcoin jobs has been a game changer for job seekers looking to work on Bitcoin and Bitcoin only. Before Bitcoiner Jobs, it would take a lot of time and research to find out who was hiring in the space; this is a struggle I personally felt when I knew I wanted to dedicate the rest of my working life to Bitcoin.

As we know, the Bitcoin community rocks and this has worked its way into the job seeking community. We celebrate Bitcoiners who have landed their dream job and we promote those looking to leave their fiat job, so we can band together and help as many Bitcoiners as possible.

With it being so early and the number of job seekers outweighing available jobs, a lot of Bitcoiners are looking at how they might transition into the Bitcoin ecosystem, as their professional career to date may not align to current needs. This is something we are very aware of and are working hard at providing a solution for.

What kind of growth do you see for Bitcoiner Jobs?

Dennis: Bitcoiner Jobs has been growing in lockstep with the Bitcoin industry and will continue to do so, with a push to go beyond Bitcoin companies and working its way into Bitcoin teams at companies across an array of industries.

The U.S. currently leads the way with companies and hiring but this is starting to level out with companies popping up in all regions across the world and the beauty of working on Bitcoin is that we are already global, the mindset is there and so is the talent.

A key area for growth over the coming months and years will be education and being ready to support multiple companies as they enter hypergrowth stages. This is going to be very exciting.

What types of features do you hope to add to the website?

Dennis: We are actively planning version two and recruiting a team of Bitcoiners to make this a reality. There are many key features we want to work on. By improved searching and matching functionality for employers and job seekers, we can help streamline the shortlist for employers and a shortlist of jobs for the job seekers. As this balloons — and we know that it is going to balloon — it’s the Bitcoiner industry rather than just the Bitcoin companies. Bitcoiner Jobs is focused on the people. We plan to have that functionality because people aren’t going to be able to search through thousands of jobs.

A big issue with LinkedIn is the model for companies and recruiters to contact you is a monthly cost so what you find is you’ve effectively got recruiters and a talent team spamming anyone that has one word that matches the search in their profile. They haven’t done any research; they haven’t read the candidate’s profile. They’re just saying, “Right. You’ve got this word on your profile and we’re going to spam you.” I know this because this is a process that I used to use in my previous days in HR and recruitment. I’m thinking about how there needs to be an economic incentive for people or a cost for people to reach out and engage.

There is a potential to have a messaging function where people that want to talk to you need to put in their own work rather than just posting a wide net and hoping that people reviewing come back.

We also want to adjust the UX [user experience] to account for Bitcoiners looking to hire Bitcoiners at any company; this is a big focus for us as the current supply of jobs is not enough to satisfy the demand from jobseekers. What we have to understand is that not every Bitcoiner should just go and retrain to be a software engineer because then we’re going to end up with too many software engineers and not enough people building houses or wiring houses or fixing things. It’s all of these different lines of work that people are passionate about, and they shouldn’t lose that passion just because Bitcoin is there. Bitcoin is for everyone, so it would be really cool if I was a construction manager and I want to hire an electrician, but that electrician is a Bitcoiner. Like how much fun are we going to have on site? Wiring the house, having fun, but we’re listening to podcasts instead of the local radio and all these different things. It’s about collecting the people. It goes far beyond just Bitcoin product companies.

We want more engagement with the open-source community and connecting contributors to projects. Lightning can be integrated in features such as headhunting bounty programs, where people unlock certain sats as they work their way through the bounty and it gets accepted by the project. It’s important to understand how misaligned incentives are in the recruitment industry. If you’re a really good recruiter that’s got a network in the Bitcoin industry then you can do headhunting bounties powered by Lightning escrow where if they [the candidate] get interviewed, that’s a little [reward]. You get paid for that. That’s how the recruitment industry could be cut up into segments where you’re not just doing all of the work upfront for free. The employer is actually seeing that there’s a cost to the recruiter and they’re not just sending 10 resumes with buzzwords on profiles and just hoping that one person gets the job so they can get that recruitment bonus.

There’s lots of funky ideas that we can realign incentives from a recruitment perspective using Lightning.

We also want to extend partnerships with educational partners to help scale engineering recruitment across the industry. I think the key thing is continuing to give back. It’s the building of a network of open-source projects so that the people who are available to work in Bitcoin can have an easily accessible directory of all the open-source projects in one place that’s constantly being updated with bounties. We want to help people understand how they can get involved. It doesn’t have to just be contributing to open-source by coding. It could be documentation. It could be testing.

A big majority of the big Bitcoin product companies are going to build the tools and solutions that we need, so as Bitcoiners, we need to be aware of the bottleneck of engineering talent that isn’t just experienced in our industry, it’s something that’s experienced [everywhere in tech]. As technology takes over, everything is building relationships with educational programs, like the Chaincode [Labs] seminars, Base58, Qala, Summer Of Bitcoin. So that as they train these engineers in Bitcoin, we can then propose those trainees to the Bitcoin companies and just have a slide with all of the engineering talent coming through and we can be a hub to connect that network.

Do you have an estimate of how many people have found work through your site?

Dennis: This is something we are not able to track as we support multiple application processes. We have native application forms, email and external job application links, depending on how the employer manages their recruitment process.

However, we have heard a lot of success stories from employers on the site and we have personally experienced the power of Bitcoiner Jobs at Swan. Some of our favorite feedback from companies who hire through Bitcoiner Jobs:

“Bitcoiner Jobs is a lighthouse in the fiat storm, a refuge where those who value freedom can find one another and build together.” – Start9 Labs
“Bitcoiner Jobs got us access to hundreds of applicants within days. Highly qualified individuals, culture fit, and talent that we could not find anywhere else.” – Voltage
“Bitcoiner Jobs is how I landed a game-changing career in an industry that aligns with my personal interests and values. Best of all, the first person I went on to hire also found us through Bitcoiner Jobs! There’s no better way to find high-quality talent from around the world who have put in the work and decided to become laser focused on the same standard.” – ZEBEDEE
“Bitcoiner Jobs has been an amazing place to post our open roles! In the few months we’ve posted there, we’ve been able to fill multiple roles. Highly recommend using them if you’re hiring!” – Blockstream
“Bitcoiner Jobs has a unique ability to deliver mission-oriented, high-quality individuals across a wide range of job disciplines. We have thoroughly enjoyed the diverse pool of talent that Bitcoiner Jobs has delivered and they have helped us improve our time-to-hire on multiple positions at Strike.” – Strike

Have you found a job in the industry through Bitcoiner Jobs? Email us your story!

This is a guest post by Craig Deutsch. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

The Why And How Of Getting A Bitcoin Job

22/04/2022 by Idelto Editor

If you’re dedicated to Bitcoin, getting a job in the industry can be incredibly rewarding as it fulfills the desire to advance the technology.

Coming off the Bitcoin 2022 conference, you might feel a little down from the high of meeting and spending time with Bitcoiners. I’ve also found that going to these events leaves you with an additional sense of urgency to do something more, or to become more involved somehow. One way to do that is to participate in Bitcoin projects or work in a Bitcoin job. At Bitcoin 2022, I spent time at the Bitcoiner Jobs booth hanging out with some fellow Swan employees and Bitcoin-job-hopefuls. Here are a few insights:

First, Why Do This?

There are a few main reasons why people work in a Bitcoin job:

You think Bitcoin is the most important thing, and you can’t think of any other industry that would be more exciting or energizing to work in.
You see a massive opportunity to be early in this space.
Some Bitcoiners are unemployable in other industries due to their attitudes or mindset.
You HODL a bitcoin bag and want to do what you can to help more precoiners and newcoiners find their way into Bitcoin.
Bitcoin companies are generally remote-working friendly.
Bitcoin companies will usually give you the option to be paid in bitcoin.

When working directly in a Bitcoin job, you work with other like-minded individuals on a shared cause. It feels great to have that shared vision about what’s wrong with today’s fiat world and to work together on building out the new world of tomorrow. When you work together with other Bitcoiners, you feel less need to self-censor than in a fiat job. You feel more connected and as though your work is making a difference.

Working at a Bitcoin company can give you a similar vibe to attending Bitcoin conferences and meetups.

The Trade-Offs Versus Fiat Jobs

To be clear, this isn’t for everybody. Some people are just earning too much at their fiat job to think about giving it up. In these cases, it’s “chop wood, carry water.” Keep stacking that fiat and converting it into bitcoin whether you are purchasing, earning or mining.

Taking a Bitcoin job would be trading off on income for those with specialized skill sets. It is similar to the trade-off of working at a FAANG company for the high pay and stock options versus the higher risk play of working in a small tech start-up where you get some equity and have more upside if the start-up gets bought out.

What Ways Are There To Get Involved In Bitcoin?

You could find a Bitcoin open-source project to contribute to, take a job in a Bitcoin company, or even start a company serving the industry. If you’re an enthusiast closely following the industry, there’s a good chance you can spot gaps or unmet needs — perhaps you could build out a product or service to help? Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t necessarily have to be a developer to contribute. You could be a writer, work in customer service, have transferable skills from the energy industry, or perhaps work in sales, design, operations, or many other roles.

Bitcoin has a thriving ecosystem, much of it screaming out for the right talent to join. If you want to get into Bitcoin development and contribution, look into organizations such as Blockstream, Chaincode Labs, Spiral, MIT DCI, HRF Bitcoin Development Fund, and Brink. Various exchanges and Bitcoin companies sponsor developers. There are programs to support and train Bitcoin and Lightning developers, such as Qala (see my interview with Abubakar Nur Khalil) and Summer of Bitcoin. There’s also Base58.info by Lisa Neigut of Blockstream, and Programming Bitcoin by Jimmy Song.

Finding A Bitcoin job

So what does it take to find these kinds of jobs? You can search on platforms like BitcoinerJobs.com and post your profile there. You can network and meet people at Bitcoin conferences, events, and meetups. Having open-source contributions or prior Bitcoin company experience is a plus.

Building up your portfolio of work in the space and becoming known for a specific thing will help in any job application process, and it might even help jobs find you. In some cases, a person does a job in the area “for free” but later gets paid to continue doing that work, or at least something related. In other cases, I’ve seen people create their own jobs by starting or contributing to a side project that later becomes a full-time business.

For example, some individuals start by producing educational content on Bitcoin, Lightning, security, and/or privacy topics and later get hired by a Bitcoin company to continue creating this material in-house or working as customer technical support. Others start consulting services to teach these concepts.

Building Up Your Profile

There are various ways to support Bitcoin and open source projects, as you can make contributions in multiple ways:

Helping with documentation or writing tutorials
Suggest new ideas or features and feedback to developers
Spread the word in some meaningful way
Code or code review
Research related to the project

If you want to hear more about making contributions to Bitcoin open-source projects and how this can dramatically improve your Bitcoin career prospects, check out my interview with Rockstar Developer and Pavlenex of BTCPay Server.

Make the most of Bitcoin conferences and events, especially if you meet Bitcoin company leaders or staff and outline how your skills or enthusiasm will help in a particular role.

Bitcoin Employers

Generally, Bitcoin companies benefit from hiring Bitcoiners. You get more passionate and motivated employees who genuinely care about the cause. Sure there’ll be some Twitter shitposting while on the job, but this will be more than made up for by the reduced need for training on Bitcoin. Bitcoiners as staff will also help you recruit other Bitcoiners to the team and help create the right kind of company culture too.

In Summary

If you’ve just got this background feeling that fiat job life isn’t for you, definitely look into taking a Bitcoin job. I know people who have taken pay cuts to work in a Bitcoin company who did not regret their choice. It allowed them to work on something they were genuinely passionate about with a team that shared a similar purpose. Whether you want to contribute to Bitcoin open-source projects or work in a Bitcoin company, best of luck out there, there is a lot of work to be done!

This is a guest post by Stephan Livera. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin’s Promise For The Fourth Industrial Revolution

19/04/2022 by Idelto Editor

The evolution of finance that Bitcoin represents will bring impacts comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

Since its inception, Bitcoin has paved the way for broad adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain ledger technology. Now, Bitcoin’s promise extends into the fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). The wave of development and utilization of Bitcoin as decentralized finance (DeFi) for this new revolution carries enormous potential for an increasingly connected global economy.

Industry 4.0 is making waves across global commerce. Bitcoin, through advancing networks and accessibility, challenges traditional perceptions of banking and finance. Meanwhile, its capabilities can assist organizations in overcoming the scalability challenges inherent in global trade. From reducing the negatives of the informal economy to empowering international trade through visibility, Bitcoin will come to mean a lot more to world industry in this current technological revolution.

We see the promise of Bitcoin in solving both the challenges of cryptocurrency and larger economic issues. Networks like Rootstock (RSK), Lightning and Liquid elevate Bitcoin solutions for modern supply-chain visibility and business innovation potential.

Reducing Global Poverty

One of the most promising roles of a digital currency like bitcoin has always been its global appeal. The decentralized nature of crypto means it can travel around the world safely and immutably without having to be converted or processed through a third-party transaction system. As a result, financial solutions are open to those without access to traditional or international banking systems.

Additionally, the opportunities inherent in DeFi systems stand to help elevate developing countries out of poverty and into a global financial infrastructure. We’ve seen such circumstances play out in the growth of Bitcoin in countries like Nigeria, where public perception shifts and crypto applications grow despite governmental oppression and corruption. The value of bitcoin is too evident for this currency to disappear even in restricted markets.

That’s because bitcoin can be used to stabilize fledging economies using a global standard that no one nation owns. In Nigeria, protestors used it to combat a silencing of free speech, donating Bitcoin to aid groups shut out of centralized banking. This demonstrates the role of Bitcoin in fighting corruption and enhancing one’s control of one’s own financial assets. Similarly, breaking the mental and physical health strain of financial burdens requires that individuals be able to budget and invest as they deem best. Meanwhile, opportunities on a global stage abound for Bitcoin users.

Now, designated networks for managing Bitcoin finances make it easier than ever to engage with these opportunities in a global marketplace. RSK is one example, offering smart-contract functionality over the Bitcoin ecosystem. Users can automate financial transactions based on pre-conditions built into a smart contract. From here, there is unknowable potential in optimizing supply chains and trade deals for mutually beneficial financial gain across countries and industries.

Bitcoin uniquely allows for the creation of a wholly decentralized economy because of the access it provides to a layered, stackable marketplace. Developers all over the world can access this functionality to support people and businesses in decentralized financial solutions. In turn, greater interconnected opportunities and more secure finances are possible regardless of where you are in the world.

Eliminating Scalability Challenges

Cryptocurrencies have historically had many rails on their capabilities, throttling transaction amount or speed and hampering Bitcoin usability. That isn’t the case anymore. Advancements in Bitcoin networks and smart contracts are eliminating scalability challenges, allowing Bitcoin users to engage in commerce as simply as they might with a credit card.

Lightning Network is one example of these scalability solutions. Capable of processing billions of transactions per second across this layered blockchain framework acts against the limitations of legacy systems by managing transactions off-chain while still storing the data in a blockchain ledger. Therefore, the blockchain serves as both arbiter of authenticity and the enforcer of smart contracts. Such functionality stands to support the growth of smart contracts on Bitcoin networks as the fourth Industrial Revolution flourishes.

Paired with advancing artificial intelligence, these networks enable never-before-possible levels of growth for enterprises. That’s because Bitcoin blockchain ledgers and smart contracts can interact with other data-driven technologies to foster unprecedented insight into businesses, behaviors and supply-chain functionality.

The most important tech trends of 2022 revolve around the applications of data in automation and AI as a result of Industry 4.0 advancements in these areas. The Internet of Things (IoT) brings data collection potential across business processes. Then that data is stored over increasingly smart cloud systems. AI is the final piece of that puzzle, layering with Bitcoin to produce automated growth solutions.

Securing Financial Data

Among these solutions are enhanced security provisions for financial data. Bitcoin blockchain networks support security from the base layer. However, additional security can be layered over the blockchain via the stackable nature of Bitcoin. This enables secure and fast Bitcoin transactions from Layer 2 and beyond.

The Liquid Network provides precisely these benefits for Bitcoin transactions. Liquid acts like a conversion process, backed up one-to-one on the Bitcoin mainchain. After converting coins to Liquid, users gain greater speed and confidentiality from transactions and can issue new assets like stablecoins and security tokens. From here, introducing greater security into financial management can be a convenient process for any party completing and verifying a transaction with Bitcoin.

Industry 4.0 requires the means to complete transactions quickly and securely since our interconnected world conducts business at a rapid pace. Bitcoin’s layer-ability and network- development features enable enhanced security of financial data even when these transactions aren’t occurring on the base layer of the Bitcoin blockchain. Through the power of Bitcoin networks to further security alongside convenience, one might only expect Bitcoin to grow in popularity with emerging Industry 4.0 tools.

Empowering Global Trade

Finally, Bitcoin is reasserting its promise in the fourth Industrial Revolution by empowering greater visibility and convenience in global trade on the whole. Reducing global poverty, eliminating scalability challenges and securing financial data are all steps on the road toward broader Bitcoin integration in world markets. Because this cryptocurrency has the stackability to layer enhanced security and functionality, new data-driven markets have plenty to gain from embracing this technology.

As the world continues to struggle with pandemic-era supply chains and cybersecurity challenges, the implications of Bitcoin are more powerful than ever. For enhancing the potential of Industry 4.0 in your own ventures, explore the power and trajectory of these Bitcoin networks and innovations.

This is a guest post by Frankie Wallace. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Iran Counts 30 Crypto Mining Farms Licensed to Mint Digital Currencies

27/06/2021 by Idelto Editor

Iranian authorities have so far authorized 30 facilities for cryptocurrency mining. The crypto mining farms are spread across several regions, including Tehran Province. The government has put out the data amid a crackdown on illegal miners in the country.

A Third of Authorized Mining Farms Are Based in Two Provinces

The Iranian Ministry of Industries, Mining, and Trade has issued licenses to 30 cryptocurrency mining centers, the Financial Tribune revealed this week, quoting official figures published on the department’s website. One of these mining farms is based in Tehran Province where the nation’s capital is situated.

Semnan Province, the administrative region to the east of Tehran, is home to the largest number of licensed facilities, with six crypto farms. Alborz Province is next with four, followed by Mazandaran, East Azerbaijan, and Zanjan provinces.

The ministry has also issued 2,579 establishment permits for new industrial units across the Islamic Republic, 305 of which are in Zanjan Province. Fars Province, with 262 permits, and West Azerbaijan, with its 247, are ranked second and third respectively, the English language Iranian daily detailed.

Iran approved cryptocurrency mining as a legal activity two years ago. The government introduced a licensing regime for entities that want to get involved in the industry. A report indicated that 14 bitcoin mining farms were operating under such licenses last summer.

Iranian Miners Are Facing Changing Tides

High cryptocurrency prices and low energy costs — authorized miners were initially offered a discount of almost half the regular electricity rate — turned crypto mining into an attractive business in Iran. Things have changed, however, and this year’s power shortages were partially blamed on the energy-intensive coin minting process.

In May, authorities said they’ll pull the plug on licensed crypto miners in peak hours of power consumption. According to government estimates, authorized mining facilities use around 300 megawatts of electricity every day.

Tehran went after illegal miners as well, accusing them of burning more than 2,000 megawatts daily. According to the state-owned power utility, Tavanir, the country’s electricity deficit amounts to 5,000 megawatts. Eventually, Iran decided to ban crypto mining altogether, until Sept. 22.

In a year, Iranian law enforcement has shut down over 180 crypto farms in Tehran Province alone. Earlier in June, authorities confiscated 3,000 units of mining hardware from illegal enterprises. Last week, Iranian police seized 7,000 bitcoin mining machines.

What are your expectations about the future of cryptocurrency mining in Iran? Let us know in the comments section below.

Cambridge University’s Third Crypto Study Records 101 Million Cryptocurrency Users Worldwide

25/09/2020 by Idelto Editor

The University of Cambridge and the school’s Centre for Alternative Finance has published the third “Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study.” The 71-page in-depth study examines the current growth of the crypto industry, mining, offchain activity, crypto asset user profiling, regulation, and security.

The September 2020 third edition of the Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study concentrates on four market segments which include mining, payments, custody, and exchange. A great number of participants from the cryptocurrency industry took part in the University of Cambridge (UC) study including wallet providers, exchanges, miners, cloud mining providers, crypto custodians, and more. The 71-page UC report says it leveraged two surveys from March and May 2020 to get a number of report’s metrics.

Employment Figures and Growth of the Crypto Industry

The UC report first delves into the crypto asset ecosystem’s employment figures and notes that even though the industry provides opportunity, there’s been a decline since 2017. “Respondents across all market segments, reported year-on-year growth of 21% in 2019, down from 57% in 2018,” the UC authors detail.

Furthermore, the mining sector was hit the hardest as it’s aggregated employment level saw a 37 point decline. Asia-Pacific (APAC) respondents recorded the highest share of high-growth enterprises in 2019 according to the data.

High growth is primarily younger firms that are 3-4 years old, and this represents 49% of the share of respondents. A few service providers polled detailed they saw an increase in profits in 2019 compared to years prior.

“Industry-wide, the growth in FTE employment declined by 36 percentage points between 2017 and 2019, whereas the median firm reported a 75-percentage point downward change in employment growth,” the UC benchmarking study notes.

Hashers and Global Mining Operations

The UC study then discusses the cryptocurrency mining ecosystem and the report highlights that mining is steadily reaching an “industrial scale.” The findings detail the criteria miners (hashers) leverage in order to choose which coin the operation should mine is entirely based on profit scaling.

The benchmark report notes that bitcoin (BTC) is the most popular coin with 89% of respondents mining the crypto asset. BTC is followed by ethereum (ETH – 35%) and bitcoin cash (BCH – 30%) respectively. Certain regions have different miner popularity ratings depending on the region and demographic.

“For instance, ethereum mining appears to be particularly popular among Latin American hashers, whereas bitcoin cash is more popular in APAC and North America,” the authors detail. “The mining of privacy coins in Western regions also differs from the global average: 28% and 19% of European and North American hashers report mining zcash, and as many North American hashers also engaged in monero mining.”

Crypto Mining Operational Expenditures and Renewable Energy

Moreover, the UC findings show that the utility cost for the average miner is roughly 79% of the aggregate operational expenditures. But there are differences that arise at the regional level, the study’s authors note.

“For instance, since the introduction of new tariffs on Chinese imports, US hashers have to pay 28% tariffs on ASICs shipped to the USA,” the report says.

While discussing electricity costs one takeaway from the study suggests the median Asian and North American miner pays roughly the same amount for electricity.

The mining section also examines Proof-of-Work’s (PoW) energy consumption, in general, and the subsidies or tax exemptions stemming from governments. Government benefits have entered the fray, but only “28% of the surveyed hashers report receiving support from governments.”

Additionally, the renewable energy estimate is much lower than prior reports concerning renewable energy and bitcoin mining. “39% of miners’ total energy consumption comes from renewables,” the UC study highlights. However, 79% of the survey respondents leverage a “mix” of traditional fuels like coal and renewables like hydropower.

“Hydropower is listed as the number one source of energy, with 62% of surveyed hashers indicating that their mining operations are powered by hydroelectric energy,” the UC study details. “Other types of clean energies (e.g. wind and solar) rank further down, behind coal and natural gas, which respectively account for 38% and 36% of respondents’ power sources.”

The Digital Asset Landscape and Crypto User Profiling

As far as the growing crypto asset landscape is concerned, bitcoin (BTC) is still the most popular cryptocurrency by representation on custodial services, payment processors, exchanges, and wallet providers. “Support has declined slightly over time from 98% of service providers in 2017 to 90% in 2020,” the UC authors mention.

Ethereum (ETH) is the second most commonly leveraged coin and the crypto asset is widely supported, while LTC, BCH, and XRP are available on at least 50% of 2020’s crypto service providers.

Moreover, despite the negative news and delistings, “zcash and monero are still becoming increasingly more available, and are supported at 24% and 17% of service providers respectively.” Since the second UC benchmark report, identity-verified crypto asset users have increased significantly.

The UC crypto study states:

In 2018, the 2nd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study estimated the number of identity-verified crypto asset users at about 35 million globally. Applying the same methodology, an update of this estimate indicates a total of up to 101 million unique crypto asset users across 191 million accounts opened at service providers in Q3 2020. This 189% increase in users may be explained by both a rise in the number of accounts (which increased by 37%), as well as a greater share of accounts being systematically linked to an individual’s identity, allowing us to increase our estimate of minimum user numbers associated with accounts on each service provider.

A Variety of Other Key Crypto Factoids

The vast amount of findings within UC’s study discusses a number of other subjects like stablecoins, IT security, and government regulations. Stablecoins like tether (USDT) have become very prominent and “increasingly available” the report highlights.

“Tether support [grew] from 4% to 32% of service providers and all non-Tether stablecoins [grew] from 11% to 55%. This increase is not simply from service providers holding stablecoins diversifying their holdings, but rather more service providers offering stablecoins,” the study insists.

The report also says, at the same time crypto asset companies are complying with new regulations, the “decoupling of duties, such as between custody, clearing and settlement responsibilities, appears to be underway” as well.

UC’s authors say the number of crypto companies that didn’t adopt know-your-customer rules (KYC), dropped from 48% to 13% during the last two years. This metric highlights that regulatory guidelines and compliance is on the rise. The UC study insists that the standards enforced by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) invoked this significant change.

Despite the increase of KYC/AML procedures, UC’s third benchmark study underscores the recent emergence of decentralized finance (defi) platforms.

UC’s authors Apolline Blandin, Gina Pieters, Yue Wu, Thomas Eisermann, Anton Dek, Sean Taylor, and Damaris Njoki emphasize defi has introduced “more risky and experimental innovations.” In the near future, it is possible that crypto service providers will be impacted considerably by the defi space, the study notes. Defi will likely impact large crypto service providers in particular and their business models “in the next 12 months.”

The third “Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study” in its entirety can be viewed here.

What do you think about UC’s third cryptocurrency benchmark study? Let us know in the comments section below.

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