Quote from: Mt. Gox on June 16, 2019, 03:21:57 AM

According to this article, PwC hired 400 blockchain experts in 2018:

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Rival PwC said it had taken on a similar array of clients and currently employed about 400 "blockchain experts" globally, across multiple divisions, including its consultancy business.

And that's just one company. That number doesn't count those working for other companies like EY, KPMG, Microsoft, etc.

My question is, where do these companies find them? What qualifies someone to be a "expert" in this field? Given that the cryptocurrency community is still a fairly small and nascent one where everyone knows everyone else, the actual experts tend to be well-known figures, and Bitcoin degrees aren't really a thing, how was PwC able to find 400 of them?

In fact, the number of people who have contributed code to the Bitcoin codebase over the past decade since Bitcoin has been around is only about 500. For Ethereum, it's only about 300.

Or do these companies just treat anyone with a computer science degree to be an expert? (Heck, I'm a computer science student. Can I be a Bitcoin expert too?)

Like rosez, I can't see the article itself because it's likely behind a FT paywall. It might be an interesting article, but I'm not paying for it lol.

A Bitcoin "expert" is literally just a label that people put on someone else. I want to believe that companies would have a bit more of a refined definition of what an "expert" actually is, but there's a decent chance that it's anyone who can describe the blockchain and has some tech/coding experience. There isn't a way that you can define an "expert" when there's no benchmark that they can be measured against.

I'd put money that anyone who can walk into a company and accurately describe the blockchain system while also flexing a Comp Sci degree or something similar can be regarded as an expert, whether they deserve it or not. I don't think that there are many experts out there, but it's a completely subjective definition.