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As undergraduates emerge from schools with software development or business skills, companies exploring blockchain use are seeking job candidates with four specific skill sets, according to a new report from consultancy KPMG.

Those skills are needed more with each passing month; KPMG expects an increase in the number of companies exploring blockchain this year for everything from identifying new business models to piloting projects and ultimately, progressing to scalable solutions.

KPMG said, not surprisingly, that it's seeking graduates with a solid grasp of blockchain at a high level – those who understand distributed ledgers, peer-to-peer topologies and consensus mechanisms; all are key for a technologist hoping to land a high-paying blockchain developer job.

The nexus of tech and business acumen

"The key thing we do at KPMG is balance an understanding of how this technology works without being a blockchain hammer looking for a nail," said Tegan Keele, KPMG's U.S. blockchain program lead. "You have to know how to apply it and that really only comes if you have an understanding of business processes.

"Secondly, members of a blockchain team should understand the difference between a variety of technologies, including the cloud, protocols, ERPs and networks, and know  when to use different mechanisms and platforms.

"This will help ensure they can understand how blockchain interacts within an existing technology ecosystem, and how that ecosystem will impact the design of the blockchain solution," KPMG said.

"And for those who are planning to work on the development side of blockchain, some knowledge of coding (JavaScript, HTML, solidity, etc.) is helpful....

That means the company looks for blockchain developers with business acumen, such as a knowledge of supply chain or procurement systems or finance processes – skills that are already taught in undergraduate programs.


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In today's networked environments, the only certainty is change. It is imperative, therefore, that solutions are selected and designed with that in mind.

KPMG also looks for a job candidate's technical literacy, or the ability to understand  data generated on a blockchain platform and how to use it in a business context.

One of the key attributes of blockchain is its ability to span an organization and its business partners, essentially connecting multiple, disparate entities through a single, transparent electronic ledger.

"But, then you have multiple people within each participating entity looking at the blockchain and they're all going to want to see slightly different things," Keele said. "So understanding how to derive those insights out of the information on a blockchain is key."

A hacker's ability to problem solve

Those entering the blockchain development/engineering field should have the mentality of a hacker - or the ability to problem solve collaboratively in a workshop setting when a client presents a business problem.


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They need to be able to think through the business objectives, implications and value "for each of the participants and then [define] the architecture and overall solution flow," KPMG said. "It is this collaborative approach that leads to a successful application of blockchain.

"Given the lack of coursework around blockchain and its relatively new existence in the enterprise, a team must be open to exploring and experimenting by "hacking the problem" from a business and IT perspective, according to KPMG.

"I'd say at KPMG we've been very successful at taking [employee] skills in-house and upscaling them to deliver blockchain skills," Keele said.

"Until universities start printing blockchain degrees, that will be the pattern that will continue.

"The list of U.S. universities now offering courses on blockchain continues to grow and includes such prestigious institutions as MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

The top blockchain jobs, according to a report last year by BusinessStudent.com, are interns, project managers, developers, engineers, quality engineers, legal consultants or attorneys and web designers.

While most techies who add blockchain to their skillset are versed in programming languages such as Java or Python, it's by no means a prerequisite for learning the technology.

Like any emerging technology, having the right talent is paramount to driving results, KPMG's report said."Blockchain projects will not succeed or scale without a multifaceted team that goes beyond technologists," KPMG wrote.

"We expect more universities to integrate blockchain into future coursework, which will help prepare both end users as well as those who will be responsible for building, deploying and managing blockchain."

The dearth of workers for a hot field

Currently, there's a significant lack of skilled blockchain developers, according to job search sites and research firms. That paucity of talent is one of the major stumbling blocks for companies hoping to deploy blockchain. For those with blockchain skills, the job market is red hot.

In February, the online job search site Hired reported demand for blockchain engineers was "through the roof," with year-over-year growth of more than 200%.

Hired's jobs report, which was in line with earlier reports from LinkedIn and jobs market research firms Burning Glass Technologies and Janco Associates, shows software engineers with blockchain skills are in higher demand than at any time in the past, with the number of positions growing more than five-fold in the past year.

While blockchain engineering is the most in-demand skill on the Hired marketplace, only 12% of those surveyed by the firm earlier this year identified blockchain as the top technology they want to learn. Fifty-one percent of survey respondents named Python as one of their most-liked languages, 49% cited Javascript and 19% named. PHP.

Another problem affecting the mismatch between the need for blockchain developers and the scarcity of available workers is the difficulty in finding places that offer training, according to Hired CEO Mehul Patel.

In general, one in five software engineers is self-taught, according to Hired's data.

"I think generally we are seeing less than half of engineers we looked at had a B.S. degree and one-fifth of them had gone through a year and a half of school. So, one-third of our engineering base are self-taught or taught through non-traditional means," Patel said.

Senior Reporter Lucas Mearian covers financial services IT (including blockchain), healthcare IT and enterprise mobile issues (including mobility management, security, hardware and apps).

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has just announced that it now offers trading in over 100 countries, after adding support for a further 50 countries. It’s also doubling down on its USDC stablecoin, making it available in 85 countries.

In an announcement published earlier today, Coinbase revealed that crypto-to-crypto trading is now available in 50 new countries; it’s proprietary stablecoin is also now available in 85 countries (previously only available in the US). This expansion goes for both Coinbase and Coinbase Pro.

This time last year, Coinbase was available in 32 countries; with today’s news, the cryptocurrency exchange is now available in 103 countries. The 50 new countries are now able to access Coinbase as of today are listed below:

“Angola, Armenia, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Benin, Bermuda, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, Montenegro, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Zambia.

”Indeed, it certainly seems like Coinbase is intent on taking its cryptocurrency offerings to every corner of the globe. But it’s not all been sunshine and rainbows for the digital asset exchange in the last 12 months.

Earlier this year in April, following the “crypto-winter,” Coinbase fired 30 staff members and closed its Chicago office just one year after it opened.Coinbase also came under scrutiny from Twitter users after it announced the acquisition of Neutrino, an Italian startup that used blockchain data to trace cryptocurrency transactions.

Naturally users thought they were about to get spied on, and the hashtag #deletecoinbase quickly followed.That said, in December last year, the exchange added a further 30 cryptocurrencies, including EOS, XRP, and a smattering of other shitcoinsaltcoins.

The expansion sees Coinbase join the ranks of other globally available exchanges like Binance. Notably, it’s seen fewer large scale hacks too – and it’s also taking care to comply with regulations in all the countries it’s doing business in.

Cryptocurrency is maturing. While it’s impossible to make any lofty predictions or guarantees about the fluctuations of the market, there are plenty of signs that we’ve entered a new age of investing.


Cryptocurrency is maturing. While it’s impossible to make any lofty predictions or guarantees about the fluctuations of the market, there are plenty of signs that we’ve entered a new age of investing. The top crypto exchange handles a volume of nearly $50 billion. Your next-door neighbor might have a little bit of bitcoin.

A growing number of major banks, hedge funds and even family offices are turning to digital assets to complement their traditional investment portfolios.In what is likely a first for university endowments, the Harvard Management Company (the largest academic endowment in the world) recently invested some $5 to $10 million into cryptocurrency.

This past February, JPMorgan Chase launched JPM Coin, making it the first US bank to create a digital coin representing a fiat currency. Their token is in a prototype phase and is being tested solely with JPMorgan institutional investment clients.

But cryptocurrencies aren’t physical goods that can be locked up in a safe or transported in a Brink’s truck. Digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) exist on the blockchain and are maintained in a decentralized environment.

To establish “ownership” of cryptocurrencies, the transaction activity is tracked on a public ledger - the much-heralded blockchain itself - by public and private keys. Public keys are the address used to send and receive crypto. It’s necessary that everyone knows this address.

Private keys must be kept secret because they are used to authorize the transmission of cryptocurrency held. Keys are stored in what’s typically called a wallet. There are various forms of digital wallets, which I will get into shortly.

While cryptocurrency investment is on the rise, in order for this digitally-based currency to prosper the right infrastructure must be in place.Let’s be honest: cryptocurrency is a ripe target for theft. According to a report by Ledger, nearly $1 billion was stolen in 2018.

The threat landscape faced by cryptocurrency investors is similar to that facing security professionals in all tech spaces. Traditional cyberattack methods like site clones, phishing and SMS hacks coupled with hardware tampering and social engineering are still problems in this new frontier.Hackers have absconded with millions of dollars by hijacking cell phone accounts.

Entire crypto exchanges - handling upwards of hundreds of millions - have been forced to shut down as a result of cyberattacks. And it’s not just hackers to worry about. The nature of crypto storage can lead to the loss of funds as well. Take the recent QuadrigaCX debacle for instance.

At its peak, the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange handled nearly $200 million in assets. Its lone operator, Gerald Cotton, personally held all his clients’ security keys.

Last year, on December 9th, Cotton died after being hospitalized due to complications from Crohn’s disease. Because he was the only one with access to those private keys proving crypto ownership, all the assets under Quadriga’s management followed Cotton to his grave.

Though highly anomalous, the Quadriga event has served as a final wakeup call to both institutional investors and their customers as to how important it is to securely safeguard your digital assets with a trusted platform.

In the cryptocurrency world, there are several ways to store your holdings but they all generally involve some form of wallet. Basically, a “crypto wallet” is a device on which your private keys are stored. Your private keys are a critical piece of information used to authorize spending and selling crypto on the blockchain.

The wallets in which you hold them can be physical devices, software- or solution- based or simply the online exchange from which you’ve purchased your currency.Of those wallets there are two types: hot and cold. Hot wallets are connected to the internet, while cold wallets are not. Cold wallets are considered much more secure than hot wallets.

Hot Wallets

There are two main types of hot wallets:Web/Online/Exchange: Leaving your crypto on an exchange is an example of hot wallet storage. Any type of storage that is online is considered “hot.” These types of online wallets are the most unsecure and susceptible to being hacked, having your email and login info being stolen, or to a counterparty risk.
Software Wallets: A software wallet is an application that you download to your computer or phone. It is considered safer than a web/exchange wallet because you, rather than a third party, have control of your private keys. However, since your computer and phone are vulnerable to hacks, software wallets still aren’t the best option.
Cold WalletsThere are two main types of cold wallets:

Hardware Wallets: Hardware wallets are widely considered the safest option for storing your crypto. Typically, in USB format, a hardware wallet can be connected to the internet to transfer an exchange for trading, but it can be disconnected, with your crypto stored totally offline and inaccessible to hackers. The main principle behind hardware wallets is to provide full isolation between the private keys and your easily-hacked computer or smartphone. 
Paper Wallets: A paper wallet is an offline mechanism for storing. You literally print out your public and private keys on paper and keep them somewhere safe. This is extremely safe - and cheap - but obviously not the best method. If you lose the paper, you completely lose your private keys.So clearly you can’t be running crypto on a bunch of jump drives. Even the most novice crypto holder needs a wallet that has both a secure element and custom OS without compromising security and convenience. While blockchain aims at revolutionizing financial systems, many investors are still decades in the past when it comes to the way they are safekeeping their digital assets.

Hardware wallets have become the de facto best practice amongst individuals serious about their investments but think about enterprises handling millions of dollars’ worth of crypto. In the early stages of institutional investing, asset managers would find themselves securing massive amounts of wealth on hardware wallets with no convenient and efficient way to implement a meaningful segregation of duty.

Finding a Holistic Security Solution

This may have created new jobs for bodyguards and generated revenue for security equipment companies, but it hindered the growth of the segment by exposing crypto funds to an operational risk far above the appetite of the average investor. Institutional investors can’t simply rely on standard wallets, however secure they may be.

The financial industry needs custody solutions that are more holistic in their approach, combining both hot and cold approaches, and encompassing both hardware and software technology solutions.The absolute most secure way to manage crypto assets is through a multi-authorization governance infrastructure.

Secure storage of large digital asset funds is complex, and exchanges and institutions need safe, comprehensive and integrated solutions. This approach employs a multi-authorization self-custody system of management and gives financial institutions security, control and speed of execution along with a reliable governance framework.

Proper security is crucial to the diligent management of crypto assets, whether you’re just a hobby holder or an institutional investor overseeing millions. Mainstream adoption of crypto is gaining momentum and as more come on board, there will be more targets for cyberattacks.

Echoing a common refrain in the tech world: It’s crucial for everyone involved to be aware of the risks and how to mitigate them.

About the Author:

Demetrios Skalkotos leads global business unit operations for Ledger Vault, a multi-authorization cryptocurrency self-custody management solution built to secure large amounts of various digital assets. Skalkotos has decades of experience running global software and infrastructure businesses for the U.S. exchanges Nasdaq and ICE.