🧘‍♂️Crypto Careers For Dummies

Market Meditations | June 23, 2022

Dear Meditators

Don’t be fooled. Not everyone working in crypto has put in an application at McDonald’s. In fact, cryptocurrency job listings are more plentiful than Elon Musk shill tweets… if you know where to look.

Today’s Meditations:

How to Land A Job in Crypto
dYdX Announces Ambitious Scaling Plans
Sam Bankman-Fried to the Rescue!

⏰ Top Headlines

? Will Work For Crypto

As shown in the image below, average job salaries for crypto careers are quite lucrative, even for positions unrelated to development or engineering. But success comes at a price.

Web3.career: 22/06/2022 – Web3 Non-Tech Salaries by Speciality

✅ Pros

The ever-evolving nature of this industry means a wide variety of services are needed. Writing, coding, customer-service, graphic design, meme lords… the list is long.
Growing industries foster smaller startup teams. These environments are incredibly rewarding. Seeing a personal contribution come to fruition is one of the most gratifying career experiences possible.
Crypto is a new field full of potential. Startups and expanding companies offer upward mobility opportunities at a much higher rate than traditional companies with decades-long histories.

❎ Cons

The choices can be overwhelming. On the first approach, knowing which to pick can be a difficult process.
Crypto never sleeps. The break-neck pace of this industry can prove too demanding for some. If a dream career in crypto is your goal, be ready to make sacrifices.

❓ Getting Started

Write. Maintaining an active Twitter or Medium account reinforces newly learned information and refines writing skills (something many job providers look for). In the off chance your account goes viral, headhunters may actually seek you out for positions. Small Cap Scientist recently saw a large follower increase due to his coverage of the Celsius news.
Stay active in the community. Almost every protocol and platform has a Discord or Telegram channel. Being active in these avenues can ingratiate you to founders, developers, and other team members. Curve Finance team members are almost always active in their Discord servers.
Get DAOn on-chain. Decentralised Autonomous Organisations frequently look to active community members when expanding to add jobs. Knowledgeable community managers and posters are a valuable resource pool considered by recruiters. MakerDAO is currently seeking applications for a number of positions.

? Pulling the Trigger

Crypto isn’t a conventional industry, so consider a different approach.

Compose a list of places/influencers/projects you’d like to work for. Research your targets. Find out everything there is to know about them. Don’t just skim an “About” page 30 minutes before an interview.
For each, outline a way in which you can add value. Find a practice or area in a successful company that can be done better and explain how you can level it up.
Offer to work for free. Sound crazy? Interns do it every day. Lose the ego and put the work in. Demonstrate your dedication and enthusiasm to potential employers by doing.

Get a head start by knowing what industry leaders look for with Koroush AK’s Top Tips to land a job in crypto. Look into current job listings on or scour posts for interesting opportunities here.

Keep an eye out for when we continue our job hunt by looking at how to level up resumes and portfolios, along with a deeper look into networking your way to the perfect job.

? dYdX Announces Ambitious Scaling Plans

dYdX was founded in 2018 and is currently the largest decentralised derivatives exchange, with a trading volume of over $650 million in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. On June 22nd, the team announced plans via an official Twitter thread to develop and migrate to its own Cosmos-backed blockchain as part of the dYdX V4 update.

Currently, the exchange operates on an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network developed by Starkware known as StarkEx.
dYdX V4 will be developed as a standalone blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint proof-of-stake consensus protocol, a software development kit used by projects in the Cosmos ecosystem.
The issue with current Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions is that none can handle the throughput needed to run an order book and matching engine needed for dYdX to prosper.
The existing dYdX product processes ~10 trades per second and ~1,000 order places per second. Building a standalone chain will allow orders to be significantly scaled up.
As the protocol is migrating away from Ethereum, traders will not need to pay gas fees to trade but instead, pay per cent-based trading similar to regular exchanges.

The team claims that dYdX’s new chain “marks the full decentralization of the dYdX protocol” as the chain will be controlled by a distributed set of validators rather than the founding team alone. To develop a deeper understanding of dYdX V4 and the new dYdX Chain, check out the official announcement here.

? Sam Bankman-Fried to the Rescue!

We continue to see liquidity issues among other problems, due largely in part to the current crypto climate. Exchanges and other crypto companies are doing everything necessary to stay afloat. When everything appears to be going bad, here to save the day – Sam Bankman-Fried. He has just signed two deals to bail out both BlockFi and Voyager Digital.

Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, has agreed to provide BlockFi with a $250 million revolving credit facility.
BlockFi CEO, Zac Prince, said that the FTX deal is providing much more than a round of debt. He says that this “also unlocks future collaboration and innovation.”
Bankman-Fried’s quantitative trading firm, Alameda, has committed $500 million in financing to the crypto brokerage – Voyager digital.
This deal consists of a $200 million credit line of cash and USDC stablecoins. Additionally, a 15,000 bitcoin revolving facility (worth approximately $300 million).
Bankman-Fried came just in time to save Voyager. They were set to take a $650 million loss on loans issued to 3AC if they failed to pay.
Bankman-Fried told NPR that he feels a “responsibility to consider stepping in, even if it is at a loss to [themselves], to stem contagion… I want to do what [I] can to help [the ecosystem] grow and thrive.”

While there are no central banks willing to help it is nice to see influential members of the community coming to the aid of competing firms! That speaks a lot to the belief Bankman-Fried has in the industry.

Twitter

[DB] CRYPTO BROKER VOYAGER DIGITAL LOWERS DAILY WITHDRAWAL LIMITS FROM $25K TO $10K- db
VCs: “we’d love to help you backstop crypto firms and provide liquidity because we care deeply about preventing market contagion”. also VCs: “can we please do it for the one great company (after you fix it) and make a lot of money doing it, you can take the others k thx bye” – SBF

?Act

Create Twitter, Medium, and/or Discord accounts dedicated to crypto.
Search current job openings on CryptoJobsList and Web3.career
Follow @MrktMeditations on Twitter to keep up to speed with trending topics

? Watch

Koroush AK’s Top Tips to Land a Job in Crypto

? Did you enjoy today’s newsletter? This survey is your chance to tell us how we can improve the product for you. Link here.

??‍♂️✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Misael Calleja, Kai.A, Nick T., Max P., Kimia K., Ellen B. and Koroush AK. Graphics were produced by Ellen B.

Not financial or tax advice. The content in this newsletter is for informational purposes only. Nothing in this email is intended to serve as financial advice. We are not financial advisors. Every investment and trading move involves risk. Do your own research when making a decision. See our important security disclaimers here.

Disclosure. Some of the links we’ve included are affiliate, they give you rewards and discounts and earn us a commission. Additionally, the Market Meditator writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.