Market

Looking for a Job in Crypto? Here Are 5 Skills You Need

Published

3 Monaten ago

Oktober 10, 2020

So, you’re trying to get a job in crypto. Do you need a degree to showcase your mastery of blockchain technology?

“No,” said Columbia University adjunct professor Omid Malekan, “because that almost doesn’t exist.”

This story is part of the CoinDesk U series about blockchain at universities. See our ranking of U.S. universities here.

Blockchain was expected to be the top-demanded hard skill in the job market in 2020, according to a LinkedIn annual report in January. Malekan, a blockchain consultant for clients like Citi who teaches an MBA course on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, says demand far outstrips supply in job postings at both crypto and non-crypto-native companies.

While the job market may have shifted during the COVID-19 economic downturn, startups are “hiring super aggressively” for engineering help, says Philipe Forte, partner at The BlockVenture Coalition, which brings together 41 university blockchain groups and 44 funds. Businesses including Walmart and JPMorgan are increasingly experimenting with new blockchain initiatives where non-technical folks are needed, he said.

Professors, students, recruiters and startup founders alike say a formal education isn’t what it takes to get a job in this sector. The pandemic’s stress on the university business model has made the payoff of a blockchain education even more questionable.

Instead, what these companies look for in new hires, Malekan said, is firsthand experience like “interacting with the blockchain, investing in bitcoin or yield farming on Ethereum.”

Here’s what our sources say are the top five skills you need to get your foot in the door.

1. Know the fundamentals

In job interviews at crypto-oriented companies, “the first thing that you’ll hear is: How does Bitcoin work?” says Nir Kabessa, former president of the Columbia Blockchain Club and founder of Yup, which rewards users with tokens for social media activity.

Kabessa was directly involved in expanding Columbia University’s blockchain curriculum and was a teaching assistant for Malekan. But when it came to learning the fundamentals, “I learned a lot from teaching myself and listening to guest speakers we had,” he said.

Read more: Bitcoin 101: What is Bitcoin?

Unable to return to campus this fall, Janice Ng, head of education at Blockchain at Berkeley, a leading student-run university club, moved the course online and opened up to non-Berkeley students. This is just one of the many free online programs aiming to break down the barrier to entry to this space.

“Everyone has heard of blockchain and its related buzzwords, but they do not necessarily know what it brings,” says Ng. “Teaching the fundamentals is our goal to make blockchain more accessible.”

2. If you’ve got it, flaunt it

Portfolios and projects will become more important as part of a candidate getting hired, says Tyler Wellner, partner at BlockVenture Coalition. “We’ll see a trend over the next 10 years that resumes start to get a bit more outdated,” he said.

If you’re applying for a developer role, contribute to open-source projects and let your code speak for itself, says Scott Olson, director of blockchain integrations at Truffle Suite, a smart contract development environment. Olson says his company has seen so many cases where applicants claim to know Solidity, Javascript or Typescript but get caught in the coding test round.

“Highlight your GitHub contributions and let people evaluate your code,” said Olson. “If you make a claim about anything technical, make sure you can back that up.”

3. Speak to the masses

When former Latcha+Associates marketing intern Chase Chapman felt it was unfair that people were not getting paid for their data, she looked to blockchain technology as a solution. Eventually, she founded her own startup, Decentology, to help make building on blockchain more accessible for mainstream users and developers. But she says it’s very hard to find someone who can effectively market their company to those folks and skilled developers alike.

Read more: The Top Universities for Blockchain

“You need to speak the language of the crypto-native while empathizing with mainstream users’ general lack of caring about the fact your product uses blockchain,” she said. “When you’re able to hit that sweet spot, you unlock a lot of value.”

4. Get familiar with different use cases

Nisreen Bahrainwala, co-founder of the Midwest Blockchain Consortium, a network of universities, entrepreneurs, and corporate partners, advised taking a page from her failed blockchain startup, Viveca, which tracked prescription data in an effort to tackle the U.S. opioid crisis. “Our tech was fine on paper but no one was paying for it,” she said.

The challenge arose when selling new technology that would conflict with legacy systems. Amid the pandemic, “no one in the healthcare industry had bandwidth to deal with a new technology,” she added. “Just because something is broken or subpar, doesn’t mean there are incentives to fix it.”

Read more: The Best Blockchain University Programs Actually Pay Students to Learn

Anthony DiPrinzio, head of BASF Blockchain Lab, works to find the right use cases and business models around blockchain technology for the company to pursue. “A lot of people get caught up in the hype” of using the technology, he said, “but they need to understand blockchain doesn’t solve all the problems.” It’s essential to understand how blockchain is being used in the market before pitching a new idea.

5. Make connections – even virtually

Conferences, which bring together companies, investors, influencers and newbies, are major forums for the crypto community where new ideas are exchanged and decisions are made. Events have largely shifted online, from ETHGlobal’s ETHOnline to local-turned-virtual marathons like LA Blockchain Summit and NY Blockchain Week – as well as CoinDesk’s own Consensus: Distributed conference in May.

“Back in 2019, students like us in the Midwest couldn’t go to all these big conferences on either coast,” said Bahrainwala.

This year may have kept most of the world at home, but use that to your advantage.

“These conferences, especially being virtual, are great opportunities to chat with people, network and give you a point of reference,” said Olson from Truffle Suite. When reaching out to a speaker after the conference mentioning a note from their talk, “it shows you did some legwork.”

“We get a lot of those cold emails, but if somebody mentioned something about what I talked about in a podcast, video or conference I spoke at, I’ll respond back.”

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Market

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Down to $26K but Traders Remain Bullish

Published

20 Minuten ago

Dezember 29, 2020

Few seem to be bothered by bitcoin’s volatility on Tuesday, as the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market capitalization declined to the $26,000 level after its first-ever trades above $28,000 on Sunday. Many market participants are convinced retail and institutional investors will push bitcoin’s price higher after the holiday lull.

Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $26,937.67 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 0.37% over the previous 24 hours.
Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $25,875.05-$27,117.95 (CoinDesk 20)
BTC between its 10-hour and 50-hour averages on the hourly chart, a sideways signal for market technicians.

Bitcoin trading on Bitstamp since Dec. 23

Source: TradingView

With limited institutional trading activity during the final days of 2020, traders and analysts told CoinDesk the recent price movement has been largely driven by retail investors.

“It’s quite unusual for the past whole week being like this, given it’s a holiday season. Usually during the holiday season there’s a liquidity crunch,” Mable Jiang, principal at crypto hedge fund Multicoin Capital, told CoinDesk. “The heat was partially driven by the recent run-up of bitcoin, and the resurfacing retail interest in the market, at least in China.”

Jiang noticed a few patterns in recent trading activity among retail investors. Some are rolling alt-coins into bitcoin and ether. Others are looking for coins that may potentially outperform bitcoin on returns in the coming months.

Bitcoin volumes by exchange since Dec. 1. 2020

In TradeBlock’s weekly market commentary on Dec. 28, the cryptocurrency analysis firm wrote that recent highs for bitcoin and ether were driven by outflows from XRP.

“The only two digital currencies the [Securities and Exchange Commission] has definitely stated are not securities are bitcoin” and ether, TradeBlock said. “As regulatory uncertainty increased in the alt-coin market after the SEC’s action [against Ripple Labs, claiming it was trading an illegal security, XRP], traders took the opportunity to pile into more regulatory-certain assets, bitcoin and ether, while maintaining exposure to crypto amidst its one of the strongest bull runs on record.”

Read More: Coinbase to Suspend XRP Trading Following SEC Suit Against Ripple

Yet, even though bitcoin’s price fell below $26,000 in the past 24 hours many market participants appear to be optimistic about the coming weeks and months, especially after investment activity returns after the holidays.

“Should the expected wave of retail flows materialize, I would expect to see bitcoin charge past $30,000 as we enter the new year,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based prime Brokerage Bequant.

Read More: CME Tops in Bitcoin Futures Rankings Amid Rapidly Growing Institutional Interest

Last month’s price move towards the previous $20,000 resistance level makes a convincing case to support such optimism, according to Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank. While small sell-offs occurred three times during that rally (on Nov. 25, Dec. 1 and Dec. 5), prices quickly recovered as a strong demand for bitcoin outweighed the amount of bitcoin sold.

Read More: Whale Sightings Become Scarce, Removing Downward Pressure on Bitcoin: Analyst

“Since then, the bears have been reluctant to sell too much more as the probability is that they’ll be able to sell at higher levels in a few weeks or months,” Thomas said. “I suspect we’ll see a $26,500-$27,500 range into the first few days of the New Year. Jan. 4 onwards we should see institutional positions coming back into the market.”

Read More: Grayscale Has $19B in Crypto Assets Under Management, Up From $16.4B Last Week

Ether lower on active retail trading activities

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH) was down Tuesday, trading around $728.59 and down 0.47% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

Similar to bitcoin, market sentiment for ether’s performance has also remained positive despite the price volatility.

Read More: Ether Trades Above $700 for the First Time Since 2018

“Currently, [ether’s] trading volume is more than 15% higher than average, further proof that ether is on the rise,” Guy Hirsch, eToro’s U.S. managing director, said. “We expect the second-biggest crypto asset to continue rallying into the new year, and possibly surpassing $800 sometime during the first half of the year.”

If they aren’t doing so already, institutional players could also soon start looking into ether, particularly after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) said it will launch a futures contract on ether in February 2021. That could bode well for ether’s performance relative to bitcoin, according to some analysts.

Read More: Institutions Will Start Buying Ether in 2021, Messari Analyst Says

“The imminent introduction of ETH futures from the CME Group should spur additional adoption, especially among financial institutions looking to diversify digital asset holdings with another regulated product they are comfortable with,” Vinokourov said. “This, combined with [decentralized finance’s] continued surge, should help ETH to outperform BTC for the foreseeable future.”

Retail traders also appear more interested in ether, as the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, as provided by analytics website DeFi Pulse, reached to $14.47 billion, as of Tuesday.

Total value locked in decentralized finance since January 2020.

“From the market-making side [on DeFi], we see flows pretty evenly, with slightly more [stablecoins] to ether than the opposite, which I believe indicates that there are still plenty of retail investors trying to jump on the wagon,” said Peter Chan, a trader for Hong Kong-based crypto firm OneBit Quant who is focusing on DeFi trading.

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly in red on Tuesday. Notable winner as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

Oil was up 0.76%%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $47.98.
Gold was in the green 0.31% and at $1879.03 as of press time.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield dropped Tuesday, dipping to 0.931.

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Market

Mytheresa Group’s Parent Company MYT Files for IPO with US SEC

Published

1 Stunde ago

Dezember 29, 2020

Reports showed that Mytheresa generated 6.4 million euros in the 2020 fiscal year, compared to $1.7 million euros raised in the previous year.

Mytheresa Group GmbH’s parent company MYT Netherlands Parent B.V has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US. As stated in the announcement, MYT proposed the IPO of American Depositary Shares (ADS) representing its ordinary shares.

On the 28th of December, Mytheresa’s parent company MYT Netherlands Parent B.V filed for an IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Also, MYT said that Mytheresa, a fashion and luxury brand recorded a 27.5% increase in its quarterly net sales.

MYT Files for IPO

Per the IPO, MYT plans to list the ADS under the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the ticker “MYTE.” A news release provided by Mytheresa gave more details on the underwriters for the proposed offering:

“Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as lead book-running managers and representatives of the underwriters for the proposed offering. Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and UBS Investment Bank are acting as book-running managers for the proposed offering. Jefferies Group LLC is acting as co-manager and Cowen Inc. is acting as passive bookrunner for the proposed offering.”

Although Mytheresa’s parent company MYT has filed its registration statement on Form F-1 with the SEC, the press release revealed that it is not yet effective. Until the registration statement becomes effective, MYT will not sell or offer the securities.

Mytheresa Records Gains in Quarterly Sales

During the quarter which ended on the 30th of September, MYT said German online retailer Mytheresa raised $126.4 million euros.

Reports showed that Mytheresa generated 6.4 million euros in its 2020 fiscal year, compared to $1.7 million euros raised in the previous year during the same period. Also adjusted net income reached 19.3 million euros and volume climbed 449 million euros in Fiscal 2019.

In the company’s 2020 fiscal year, about 68% of its net sales came from its top 30 brand partners. The CEO & president of Mytheresa Michael Kliger wote in the registration statement:

“Our long-standing brand relationships include Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Balmain, Bottega Veneta, Burberry, Dries van Noten, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Loewe, Loro Piana, Moncler, Prada, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney and Valentino.”

As a result of the pandemic and the global lockdown, there was a significant increase in volume of online shopping. At the time, online shopping retailers worldwide recorded gains during the stay-home period.

As online retailers generated increases during the stay-home period, other firms were recorded losses in their stocks. Swedish multinational retail company H&M – Hennes & Mauritz AB – (Stockholm: HM.B) reported an unexpected loss in 2020 Q3.

In the quarter, H&M sales dropped 16% to 51 million kronor, which equals $5.7 million. The group noted that the losses are caused by global lockdown. However, H&M added that the company was already recovering from the negative effects of the health crisis.

Despite recording declines and plans to close hundreds of stores, H&M said there is an increase in its online shopping as many people resorted to online shopping to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

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Ibukun is a crypto/finance writer interested in passing relevant information, using non-complex words to reach all kinds of audience. Apart from writing, she likes to see movies, cook, and explore restaurants in the city of Lagos, where she resides.

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Market

Opyn Upgrade Aims to Add Capital Efficiency and Liquidity to DeFi Options Market

Published

2 Stunden ago

Dezember 29, 2020

Opyn, a marketplace for decentralized finance (DeFi) options, has rolled out a host of new features in its updated protocol that aim to make the crypto options markets more efficient and liquid.

While Opyn entered DeFi with an insurance-like product for governance tokens such as compound, its focus has since pivoted to the options market in the digital asset space. According to Zubin Koticha, co-founder of Opyn, the pivot is driven both by user interest and by the sort of hurdles decentralized finance currently faces.

“The biggest issue with DeFi is that [in] traditional finance, you don’t need super over-collateralization,” said Koticha. He added that the differing requirements on capital also eat into DeFi’s competitiveness with traditional finance.

Put simply, options are financial contracts that give users the right to buy or sell an underlying instrument at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. Depending on what they make of market trends, options allow traders to bet on the future bullish or bearish nature of the market.

While options have long existed in traditional finance they are relatively new to the crypto space and hence come with their own hurdles.

Koticha pointed out that under Opyn’s earlier version users needed to put up 100% of the strike price, the agreed-upon price for the option, as collateral in order to mint and sell one. This differs from traditional options markets where the requirements can be significantly lower.

According to Opyn, the update will add a host of new features to its options marketplace, including cash settlement for options without the need to exchange underlying assets, the ability for yield-earning assets to be used as collateral for options, and margin improvements for options.

“We changed our system from physical settlement to cash settlement,” said Koticha. Noting that while traditional markets also cater to needs to settle options in physical commodities like grain, he said there is no such physical delivery need in the crypto space and hence little need to actually exchange the asset. Instead, only the difference in price needs to be delivered.

Although the overall thrust of changes at Opyn are geared toward added efficiencies in how decentralized finance handles capital, the changes are only part of the upgrades in the pipeline. Koticha said Opyn is also plotting a protocol upgrade that will add the functionality to net short and long options together, thereby freeing up more capital.

Earlier in August, Opyn discoveredf a vulnerability on its platform when attackers were able to exploit a bug and walk away with $370,000. According to report by Cointelegraph, the bug allowed attackers to double-spend Opyn’s oToken and thereby steal the collateral put up by users.

In response, Opyn laid out in a blog post a set of measures it would adopt to prevent another such exploit and also compensated users affected by it. According to Koticha, the platform has continued to build on its security by performing additional audits and adding a functionality to pause the system.

While a central kill-switch seems counterintuitive to the ever-bustling crypto markets, Koticha said that with plans to launch a governance token in the future Opyn wants to transfer the kill-switch controls to decentralized governance for the long run.

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