I am spending a lot of time reading, studying, and thinking about Bitcoin. I was always interested in investing and finance, but never really thought about working in the field because my inner self would just reject the Wall Street/finance guy stereotype and I was just not that, and would not try hard to fit in.
With that, I worked and developed my academic and professional life in sectors that were more purpose based, and with the savings possible from the earning on these fields, I would be my own “finance guy”. Starting with investing in individual companies and treasury, until in the 2017 bull market I got to know Bitcoin.
Like everyone else, I went down in the rabbit hole, at first thinking it was a scam, then studying it and understanding it until 2018 when I got the confidence and conviction to make bigger purchases, which I still thought it was too risky, so then my thought was “pretend you already lost your money”, which looking back I want to shake my past self by the collar of my shirt.
Now, I really enjoy the field that I work on, but it’s been a decade +, and I am really looking for something more adventurous now. As @Naval says, “Do what feels like play for you, but work for others”, and really, I believe working with Bitcoin will do just that to me.
As the industry grows and matures, more and more companies like JAN3com, Jade, MicroStrategy, BlackRock, and honestly every single financial institution in the near future will need professionals for the field. Education programs are popping-up each day, but the industry seems to be growing faster than formal education in the field – not surprising for tech and Bitcoin.
So, I’d say formal education is one way, it can be a nice way to be introduced to professionals and academics in the field and as they say, “your network is your net worth” and is cliché but is true.
The other way, here it comes another cliché, is via proof-of-work, this is it, Bitcoin is PoW, and that goes for everything related to it. What that means is, do the work first, such as programming, studying, writing about it, doing podcasts, doing analysis, just putting your personal work out there to be seen. A third one is obviously to create your own job, which is the highest form of PoW.
Have I landed a job in the field yet? Well, yes, sort of, I used to write to a Brazilian financial page called finance one, it was a freelance for a weekly column, and it went well, until AI came and my texts tended to be more towards self-custody, avoid x, y, z exchanges, and that was seen as liability for them as they depended on add money from exchanges and it is totally fair. So no longer writing for them.
Good luck out there for anyone trying the same change in their professional lives!
