As of now, Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are no longer just a niche technological curiosity. Old-school corporations like IBM are among top Blockchain employers; the biggest banks make direct Blockchain investments; VCs have invested more than $8.9 billion in Blockchain companies since 2014 and YTD for 2019.
But it’s still pretty hard to find people that know the intricacies of how those systems work that are also changing very rapidly right now. There is a very small group of experts that stay in the know about it. The rising demand for the Blockchain experts is represented in the high median salary. Gartner predicts that Blockchain is going to create $176 billion in business value by 2025 and over $3 trillion by 2030. This led to the expectation that the demand for Blockchain experts will keep growing in the future.
We’ve analyzed data on 3k currently open vacancies, the top-15 most enthusiastic Blockchain employers, 807 global disclosed salaries, almost 1.6k investors that participated in 2.5k funding rounds since the Blockchain inception and discovered the following Blockchain industry trends.
Job offerings grew at 139% CAGR during 2013–2018
With such surging demand for Blockchain technology research and implementation, a distinctive trend of rising job offerings takes place as well. Blockchain-related job offerings witnessed an impressive 139% CAGR growth during the last six years. There are more than 2K job offerings listed on Angel.co in the first five months of 2019, almost the same number as during the whole of 2018.
Companies offer $81k-$144k per year for Blockchain knowledge
According to the Glassdoor Blockchain jobs available, disclosed salaries range from $17k all the way up to $271k per year. The major part of job offerings falls within a $81k-$144k per year range (404 offerings).
Average Blockchain salary is 2x greater than the US average
The US hosts the highest paying Blockchain related jobs, according to Cryptocurrency Jobs.co. The average salary for Blockchain-related job openings is almost $105k per year in the US. This is $57k or 117 percent over the US average salary of almost $49k.
IBM leads in the Blockchain open job offerings
IBM is a driving force behind multiple Blockchain initiatives the most well-known of which are IBM Food Trust, TradeLens, IBM Blockchain for Trade Finance, IBM Blockchain World Wire, IBM Blockchain Trusted Identity. According to IBM’s website, there are 335 open vacancies as of March 2019. Big Four accounting companies are the only non-technological companies that are among the top ten Blockchain-related recruiters in terms of the number of the open vacancies. That supports the idea of Blockchain being the most applicable in financial services.
London at the forefront of progress
London is Europe’s leading city in terms of Blockchain related job offerings occupying 26% of the worldwide amount. Unsurprisingly, the US leading cities are New York and San Francisco with 19% and 13% respectively.
Stanford alumni are among the most successful at fundraising for Blockchain startups
American universities are essential sources of Blockchain-related talent, especially the leading technical and business ones. Half of the alumni who lead 18 companies that secured the most considerable funding in Blockchain space graduated from American Universities. Notably, 3 CEOs have graduated from Stanford.
Blockchain developers are in more demand than other positions in the industry
The software engineer is the most common Blockchain job opening on Glassdoor, 686 job offerings out of almost 3к in total. A lot of the tools aren’t there yet. A lot of the documentation isn’t there yet. Thus front-end engineer and risk analyst closing top 3 reflect companies’ key focus on testing and developing Blockchain technology solutions.
Communication software has the largest average deal amount per company
FinTech industry leads in total invested amount and the number of backed companies, accompanied by the highest level of Blockchain adoption and impact in financial services, according to PwC survey. The communication software industry has the largest average deal amount per company only due to the Telegram’s TGE ($1.7 billion) and Kik’s deals (TGE, Series A-D) that secured near $217 million.
+800 VC firms have invested in Blockchain companies
DCG dominates in the number of deals they took part in, 31 deals ahead of the next two investors combined (Pantera Capital and Blockchain Capital). The major part (8 out of the top 10) of investors is located in the US. More than half of all investors that invest in Blockchain companies are Venture Capital firms.
Most active investors participate largely in Angel/Seed rounds
The major part of investor’s portfolios is funded through Angel/Seed rounds (except for TaaS (inactive) and Galaxy Digital) implying on the prevalence of conventional funding instruments.
The majority of investors is focused on the FinTech Blockchain startups
The majority of investors is focused on the FinTech solutions, which aligns perfectly with the industry sector popularity in terms of backed capital. It implies that not only attracts FinTech a lot of investors but also the investors are ready to back the startups with substantial amounts, meaning they treat FinTech rather as a more serious investment than just a side project to diversify the portfolio.
The biggest banks bet on the Blockchain technology
R3 is the largest Blockchain deal (Series A – $107m) the investment banks ever participated in. All of the investment banks (except Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ) invested in R3 as they see great potential in R3’s project Corda Enterprise. Overall, during the whole R3 investment process, more than 35 investment banks took part in the funding. R3 is a New York-based firm that leads a consortium of over 300 firms to build and use Blockchain technology.
The upward trend in terms of newly established Blockchain firms
Even though 2018 has seen a slight decrease in terms of newly established Blockchain firms, it is clear that the general trend is still going upwards.
Conclusions
We see that the US leads in terms of both the number of Blockchain-related talents and the number of investing entities. More than half of all investors interested in Blockchain are Venture Capital firms. Europe does not hold back, creating more job offerings, but providing less decent average salaries than in the US. The rise of job offerings worldwide takes place with multinational corporations employing Blockchain developers regularly. This trend is also represented in the average salary for corresponding positions being at least 2 times bigger than the US average. The highest level of Blockchain adoption is in the FinTech industry. PwC, EY, KPMG, are the only non-technological companies that are among the top ten Blockchain-related recruiters.
This study appeared on teqatlas
