Shubber adds that a search of profiles on popular professional social networking site LinkedIn revealed over 7,500 profiles with “bitcoin” as a keyword. Roughly half of these profiles were for workers based in the U.S. (The UK and Canada are a distant 2nd and 3rd at 9% and 8% respectively.)
Not surprisingly, the bulk of those profiles are in tech-centric California.
Within the US itself, California – or, more specifically, Silicon Valley – would be the obvious location of the majority of these bitcoin professionals. And the data bears that out: 40% of those bitcoin professionals from LinkedIn are in California. New York is in second place and Texas is in third.
Although Shubber admits that this informal survey is inherently skewed towards English speakers using Latin-alphabet keyboards, and thus would tend to exclude Chinese and other Asian workers, it does provide some indication of a growing U.S. job market for cryptocurrency professionals.
Several analyst have noted that a boom in bitcoin-based jobs is likely to take place in the third and fourth quarters of 2014, as venture capital-backed startups end their early development phase and begin making their presence known on the greater tech market. The first Silicon Valley Job Fair is set to take place later this week. The event has been quietly turning away startups and sponsors, having hit size capacity shortly after the event was announced.