London has been confirmed as a world leader in cryptocurrency after a jobs platform revealed the number of global employers currently hunting for staff in the crypto sector.
The US, as expected, takes top spot in the amount of crypto vacancies — currently standing at 3,893 — but the UK is catching up fast with the second-highest number of advertised roles.
There are currently 954 crypto jobs waiting to be filled in the UK. And, while it may be almost three thousand less than the US, it’s some way ahead of Canada’s 386 current vacancies in third spot.
Most of the UK’s 954 digital asset roles are based in London — with borough of Greenford in Ealing proving to be a magnate of crypto employment — but other areas outside the capital are offering cryptocurrencies work opportunities.
Jobs website Glassdoor discovered Leeds, Bristol, Cambridge, Glasgow, Belfast, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester were also thriving blockchain hubs. In the US, the highest number of crypto jobs were centred around New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, with Chicago and Boston also registering high for such employment.
Australia has also risen in the ranks — sitting fourth behind Canada — with a current total of 236 vacancies. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane dominate the skills centres, with places like Perth, Adelaide and Canberra showing growing potential.
The top five job functions where crypto skills are most in-demand in the UK were found to be engineering project management, information technology, marketing, finance and accounting.
London’s rise as a cryptocurrency hub has been on the cards for years, according to one of the industry’s leading employers.
Jeff Hancock, Co-founder and CEO of city-based Coinpass — a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-registered exchange with 44 employees, said: “London has always been a tech and finance capital of the world for commerce, trading, finance, fundraising and now crypto and digital assets.”
This time last year it had a staff of just 18.
“Crypto is penetrating every sector of every market in a positive way and leading firms are only going to get hungrier for talent to continue to build innovative blockchain and crypto products’’, said Hancock.
He added: “At Coinpass, we have a global reach and access to enormous international talent pool, but top quality applicants are pouring out of traditional banks, hedge funds, family offices and also university applying for positions in crypto companies before anywhere else.”
Crypto has broken into the top 10 of overall hedge fund strategies, with nearly 3 per cent of hedge funds now adopting crypto in their investments.
That’s according to data from quantitative tech provider SigTech, which found that out of the 27,255 hedge funds active globally, 774 were using a crypto investment strategy.
Among new hedge funds, crypto is in the top five strategies. And 310 out of the 774 firms using crypto — about 40 per cent — were established in the past two years. While equity investing remains the top strategy for both existing and new hedge funds, crypto is gaining ground, despite the asset class being only a few years old.
Co-founder of Sussex Partners, a hedge fund advisory firm, Patrick Ghali, said: “We see a potential opportunity because crypto markets are inefficient, volatile and sentiment-driven, and this usually leads to opportunities for alpha.”
The figures also suggest that there is a disproportionate number of hedge funds in the US using crypto — about 67 per cent of hedge funds are US-based, while 80 per cent of hedge funds wading into crypto are in the US.
Investment in crypto is gaining interest in the wider financial sector, triggering exchanges to also develop and launch crypto trading products for institutional investors.
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