Top U.S. banks and financial institutions are offering significant incentives to attract crypto talent. More than 1,000 positions for crypto experts have been filled by top U.S financial firms in the last three years. Those hiring the most include JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc..
While, earlier, banks had largely chosen to stay away from cryptocurrency the growing global acceptance and client interest have consumed their resistance, leading top financial firms to add research teams and trading desks. The banks are now offering compensation bumps of upto 50% for comparable roles to attract talent.
"The banks can’t run the risk that their clients go to another bank to do these services, so they need to build up," told Alan Johnson, MD of Wall Street compensation consultancy Johnson Associates.,
Bloomberg, "This is a big asset, a big opportunity, and they need people and need them in a hurry. They’re willing to pay a lot."
As per Revelio Labs, which collected the data by scraping LinkedIn public profiles that indicate crypto-related positions, Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley are also among those adding crypto staff.
According to Johnson a blockchain or crypto job can be lucrative at a bank commanding a about 30% premium in total compensation in contrast of a comparable position at the same institution. And for more senior positions like research or trading heads, the rise could be found upto to 50%.
Source: Revelio Labs
In recent developments of the acceptance of crypto, Gorman’s bank appointed a new crypto research team in September, while JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have begun offering crypto-futures trading. Global payments & technology company Mastercard Inc. just struck a deal in order to make it easier for banks to offer crypto rewards on their credit and debit cards. In July, BOA established a dedicated crypto research team stating that the industry and the technology became too big to ignore.
The talent hunt in the crypto domain is gaining momentum at both banks and crypto firms. Last month, LinkedIn communicated that site-wide job listings for positions relating to crypto and blockchain have jumped over 600% since August 2020.
"Even within the past week or two, we have been bombarded with headhunters who are looking for people to come and be crypto traders in everything from hedge funds all the way to larger banks," said Justin Schmidt, head of strategy at crypto-trading engineering startup Talos.