London’s investment bankers and financial regulatory class are turning to crypto in droves.
Meanwhile, Binance has hired the Financial Conduct Authority’s Steven McWhirter as its new Global Director of Regulatory Policy.
“Fintech was the big sexy thing for the last five years.
In the early days of a boom you tend to get generalist innovators, West says, who enjoy the scrappy fast-paced world of getting a startup from zero to one.
When a company reaches a point of critical mass, four or five years in things start to change.
“These are people who are generally coming from a bigger industry or bigger companies and will bring with them a lot of processes, a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of politics.
So it’s not a classic point of the people you need in years one to four are not the people, you need the four to eight, in the journey.
A jobs platform recently revealed the number of employers currently seeking staff in the crypto industry, showing the US as the highest number of vacancies at 3,893 with the UK as second with 954 vacancies with most of these roles are based in London.
UK consumers are crypto curious, with 49 per cent of UK respondents who do not currently own crypto saying they are interested in learning more or likely to buy it in the next 12 months.
“Last year was transformational for cryptocurrency ownership, with significant growth in UK adoption.
“I don’t think it’s because crypto companies want to employ that calibre or that type of profile.
And that’s why a lot of these types that aren’t, innovators are also joining in at an early stage as well.
With crypto, I’m still learning and I’m having to read every single day.
“You need to be quite technical to work in crypto, and you have to be comfortable knowing that everything that you learned in the last six months could potentially be irrelevant.
There’s a lot of revenue generation from the get-go and they make decent money.
Our core focus is on disruption to lending, banking and investing, including alternative lending, challenger banks and digital wealth management.