Career Advice on Crypto? That’s Easy.

By Eli Amdur (Also published in The Record)

Suppose you and I are standing high atop a gorge – say, 250 feet above the white-water rapids raging below – and there’s a new bridge spanning the gorge, made of wooden slats and thick rope. The bridge, wet and slick from a tropical storm, sways in a brisk wind. There are low, gray clouds.

Completed yesterday, nobody has yet crossed this bridge. You ask who put it up. I don’t know. You ask if there’s any hiking gear around or emergency facilities nearby? Doubt it.

You ask about the people on the other side. Friendly or hostile? Both, probably; not easy to differentiate. Predatory beasts? I’m not a wildlife expert, but I’ll bet on it. A set of governing laws and regulations? Maybe, but questionable at best. Dependable supply of food? Depends on what you call dependable. Shelter? What?!?!?

You finally ask, what if I don’t like it there and want to return? Well, the last bridge came down in a rainstorm. Took a year to replace. Good luck in the meantime.

Question: Would you cross that bridge?

Happily, this is merely allegorical. What’s real, though, is that a set of similar circumstances could play out if you get into cryptocurrency as a career. [Disclaimer: I’m not a financial advisor, making no pretense, implied or specific, regarding investing in crypto. I’m talking solely as a career coach, job market observer, and columnist.]

It should come as no surprise that I field inquiries from people of all ages and stages of their careers about crypto occupations. My allegorical tale gives the answer: Don’t! Not now.

For sure, crypto is here and not to be taken lightly. As of this writing, its global valuation is about $2 trillion. Global GDP is $93.8 trillion (Source: IMF), so that puts crypto at 2.1% of the world’s economy and would rank it as the 10th largest GDP on earth. And on a day of favorable trading spikes, that position would jump to eighth. Not insignificant.

Also, we know that a lot of money has been made in crypto. Problem is, a lot of money has been lost, too. But I’m here to talk about jobs. When the crypto leader, Bitcoin, loses 60% of its value literally overnight, which it did earlier this year, what do you think happened to a lot of jobs? No one knows that number because it wasn’t watched as carefully and methodically as the BLS watches the American job market. But from another source – layoffs.fyi, which tracks tech layoffs – we know this: through August, 39 crypto employers have laid off 4,247 people, including 1,100 at Coinbase, one of the big fish in this pond. Even at mature, well-established companies, tremors cause layoffs; we saw that in 2009 and again in 2020. How well girded do you think the startups are?

Far bigger than numbers, though, are the fundamental rules of engagement that are casually flouted by the crypto world by referring to what are considered faults as advantages. Such as:

• Crypto loves decentralization, touting it as democratic. But it appears more anarchistic than egalitarian. Imagine our global system running that way.
• Crypto claims transparency, but it’s easy to conduct transactions in your own shadow.
• Crypto lovers see flexibility. Or is it opportunity to manipulate vulnerable small players?
• Three sets of bad actors loom. First: governments with nefarious intentions and vast resources. Imagine how any one of them could look at that measly $2 trillion and crush it or devalue it in a day. What about your job? Second: ultrarich businesspeople who could play around with the market – like, say, Elon Musk with Twitter. What followed were layoffs of one-third of the company’s acquisition team. Third: gargantuan financial institutions, not under ordinary circumstances when they’re the bedrock of the global economy, but when they decide to flex their frightening muscles whenever they want.

The newness of it all makes a crypto-career risky, and I’d be irresponsible as an advisor to say otherwise. Yes, I know that “fortune favors the brave,” but it’s much too early in this game. Brave is one thing; foolhardy is another. Think of the bell-shaped curve for innovation adoption. The first 2.5% who get in on something are called innovators; the next 13.5% are early adopters; then 68% split evenly are early and late majority; 16% are laggards. We’re not even at the early adopters stage.

The sooner you jump in, the greater the risk and, dreamily, the reward.

But oh, that risk – for now.

Eli Amdur has been providing individualized career and executive coaching, as well as corporate leadership advice since 1997. For 15 years he taught graduate leadership courses at FDU. He has been a regular writer for this and other publications since 2003. You can reach him at [email protected] or 201-357-5844.