Proof of work.

But for many Bitcoiners, there’s a significant gap between ability and visibility. If you’ve been doing the work but still aren’t being picked or found by the right employers, clients, or collaborators, you’re not lacking talent - you’re likely hitting a Findability Blocker.

The better you can name what’s stopping you, the easier it becomes to set targeted goals and ask for the right kind of help.

Below are the six most common blockers we see in the Bitvocation community — plus a practical fix for each.

1. Information: The “Signal” Gap

“I don’t know where the high-signal Bitcoin jobs are posted or how to find hiring managers.”

If this sounds familiar, you’re missing the specific information needed to take your next step.

If you’re not following our job feed yet, that’s your first move: t.me/bitvocationfeed. But in our decentralized, largely bootstrapped industry, jobs don’t always appear on job boards. They show up in beta groups, in tweets or Nostr posts, or in private DMs: “Do you know a good [insert role]?”

The fix:
Don’t wait for opportunities. Position yourself to be found.

Ask:

• What would need to happen for hiring managers to find me before they post a role?

• Which groups should I join?

• Where should my work be visible?

• How do I make sure people know I exist?

2. Skill: The “Competency” Gap

“I know where the jobs are, but I don’t feel ready for them yet.”

This happens when you can see the destination clearly, but feel like you’re missing the skills to get there.

It can feel like a brick wall — but it’s actually the most straightforward gap to close.

The fix:
Get specific about what’s missing, then go learn it.

Knowledge is abundant (and often free). You can use AI to accelerate your learning - but don’t just consume. Teach what you’re learning. Practice it (proof of work).

There’s no faster way to build real competence.

3. Belief: The “Imposter” Gap

“I’m not good enough. This niche is too competitive for me.”

This is the Thinker and the Prover at work. If you believe you’re not good enough, your mind will quietly collect evidence to confirm it — while filtering out your wins.

The fix:
Coach yourself with better questions:

• Is this actually true?

• Who would I be without this belief?

• If I knew my background was exactly what a Bitcoin startup needed — what would I do today?

4. The Proof of Work Gap

“I’d love to build in public. I just don’t have the time.”

Documentation is part of your proof of work. If you’re not being found, it’s often because your contributions aren’t visible yet.

The fix:
Don’t try to find time — protect it.

Commit to a few minutes a day. You likely already have proof of work - but have you shared it? Is it easy to find? Could a recruiter stumble across your profile and instantly see that you’re all-in on Bitcoin?

Pick one platform - X, LinkedIn, or Nostr - and start there. Comment. Share what you learned this week. Stay consistent.

That’s what makes you memorable, surfaceable, findable.

5. The Visibility Gap

“The thought of posting content makes me feel slightly ill.”

You’re not alone. Fear of judgment - or worse, rejection - is one of the most common human fears.

Fear is meant to keep you safe. In this case, it’s keeping you stuck.

The fix:
Start small. Share your post with a trusted friend first. Get feedback. Get encouragement. Then hit publish.

You’ll likely discover that people aren’t paying as much attention as you feared. In fact, it’s actually really hard to get attention. The odds of rejection are lower than you think.

And if the response is better than expected? You’ll want to do it again.

PS: That skill you’ve been learning (from point #2)? Ask friends for testimonials. Let them endorse you publicly. It’s powerful visibility - without needing to create new content.

6. The Momentum Gap

“I can’t seem to get started — or stay consistent.”

Procrastination isn’t laziness. It’s often a sign that something feels forced. When you rely only on willpower, you often create internal resistance.

The fix:
Shift from should to want.

Ask:

• What’s one action I’d actually enjoy doing today?

Follow genuine interest, and progress starts to feel natural instead of forced. And if something still needs to get done? Do it in community. Turn it into a game. Create accountability. Make it social.

Name Your Blocker. Find Your Path.

Ready to get unstuck?

You don’t have to do this alone. Bring your question, your half-written thread, your “I want to post this but I’m scared” draft - all of it is welcome in the POW Lab.

Whether you need a sounding board, accountability, or just someone to say “you can do it,” the community is here for you.

That’s part of what a Strategic Bitcoiners Reserve is for.

Learn more about the POW Lab

Enjoy your Sunday!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡

Our Bitcoin Conference Overview has officially become too large to fit in one image! #newheaderimage

There are 15 Bitcoin events happening around the world that we know of, plus tons of local Pizza Day events on top of that.

Have you checked out our new conference overview yet?

Show me all details & ticket discounts!

Say what you’re looking for. Every single time.

In a recent 1:1 coaching call with one of our POW Lab members, I was asked how to make the most of a Bitcoin conference — especially as someone looking to land a role at a Bitcoin company.

The biggest tip I could give: when someone asks, “So, what do you do?” — don’t just say what you do now. Say what you want to do, what you’re looking for, and what you’re passionate about.

If you simply say, “I’m a data analyst,” that might be a lost opportunity.

Try adding what you’re looking for:

“I’m a data analyst. I’m currently working at a bank, but I’d love to do this work in the Bitcoin industry.”

“I’m a data analyst, but I’m actually looking to move into development — ideally at a Bitcoin startup.”

You never know what connection might come from that. They might say, “Hey, I just spoke to a founder who’s looking for someone like you — he’s over there. Let me introduce you!” Or maybe they’ll meet someone tomorrow or next week.

If they do come across an opportunity for you, you want them to remember you. But if you never share what you’re looking for, nobody can remember you for it.

And don’t forget the other side of the coin: ask people what they are looking for, too. Everyone needs something — a job, a client, an introduction. Actively try to help. That’s what makes you memorable. People remember who helped them, and they’ll want to return the favour if they can.

Companies with booths are, of course, worth talking to as well. Check them out, shake hands, and ask if they’re hiring. If they can afford a booth, chances are they have a budget for growth.

But do not underestimate small talk and casual conversations with people you meet along the way. They can be a goldmine if you know how to tap into them.

If you can’t make it to any events in May but still want to connect with Bitcoiners who are serious about their careers, join us in the POW Lab and let us support you on your journey.

Learn about the POW Lab

Enjoy your Sunday!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡

• 431 Bitcoin jobs posted across 77 companies in Q1 2026

• - 10% compared to Q1 2025

• 45% Bitcoin-only — the distributed ecosystem keeps growing

• 78% non-dev — Bitcoin needs far more than developers

• 46% remote — steady, not growing

• Mid-level dominates — Bitcoin-only companies hire flatter, with fewer managers and more senior builders

Hey Bitcoiners,

If you’ve been following us, you’ve noticed that in the last two months we didn’t have monthly reports. After regular monthly updates and intensive work on the annual report for 2025, we’ve decided to switch to a pace that’s sustainable for a small team.

The data and depth aren’t going anywhere. But we’re putting more energy where it matters most — focusing on our POW Lab and the findability of our members, building resources like our new and improved Bitcoin events board, and creating value beyond charts and numbers.

So welcome to our first quarterly report — January through March 2026!

How many Bitcoin Jobs were there in 2026 Q1?

431 jobs across 77 companies. 🟠 194 Bitcoin-only — that’s 45%.

What Does the Bitcoin Job Market Trend Look Like?

Same pattern as last year — January peaks, then tapers off through the quarter.

Q1 2026 followed the same shape as Q1 2025, with about 10% fewer jobs compared to last year.

Signs of a bear market? The effects of AI adoption? Or both?

Who’s Hiring?

77 companies hired in Q1 2026. But the split tells the same story from our annual report.

🟠 52 Bitcoin-only companies posted 194 jobs — averaging about 4 each. No single company dominates, the ecosystem is distributed.

25 Bitcoin-adjacent companies posted 237 jobs — but the top 10 account for 90% of them. If you’re targeting adjacent companies, you’re likely applying to one of a handful of major employers.

The takeaway hasn’t changed: the 🟠 Bitcoin-only ecosystem is wide and distributed. That’s where being visible matters most — because no single job board or recruiter covers all 52 of them.

We want to thank Podcasted! for the collaboration over the past few weeks.

They are the producers of Bitcoin TL;DR and have repurposed our Annual Bitcoin Job Market report as well as our recent Lead With Your Skills article into audio assets and episodes on their show.

Check them out on Geyser Fund or their website to learn how you can have your content repurposed and give them a follow on Nostr and Fountain.

How many Bitcoin jobs are remote?

46% remote — steady, not growing. 🟠 Bitcoin-only companies are split nearly 50/50 between remote and on-site.

The remote option is there and it’s not going anywhere. But if you’re a Bitcoiner looking to stand out — meetups, conferences, and showing up in person matters.

Will the desire for real human connection start showing in the numbers? We’ll be watching.

Where are the hotspots of Bitcoin opportunities?

The US leads as always with 93 on-site jobs. But look at the other hotspots — Singapore, Czechia, and Gibraltar. Three very different regions, each building their own Bitcoin hub.

That’s a signal. Bitcoin work isn’t just a US story. If you’re in Europe, Southeast Asia, or even a small jurisdiction like Gibraltar — there are opportunities closer than you think.

Do you have to be a Developer to work in Bitcoin?

Still not a developer? Not even with an AI assistant writing half your code? Good news — neither are 78% of Bitcoin job postings.

What roles have been in demand?

On the dev side — honestly, nothing flashy. Write software, crunch data, keep things running — build.

On the non-dev side: financial controllers, social media managers, product owners. If you can manage a budget, tell a story, or ship a product — Bitcoin companies are looking for you. No laser eyes required. Or does it?

Follow our Telegram job feed or Nostr bot to stay updated and never miss a role that could be the perfect fit for you.

What Level of Talent Are Bitcoin Companies Hiring?

Mid-level leads at 40%, followed by Senior (20%) and Manager (19%).

But here’s what’s less obvious: 🟠 Bitcoin-only companies and adjacent companies hire differently. 🟠 Bitcoin-only has fewer managers and more senior individual contributors and directors. Adjacent companies lean toward traditional corporate hierarchies.

It makes sense — smaller, mission-driven companies need people who own their work, not people who manage other people’s work.

Final thoughts: Not a job — a vocation

If you’ve been following us, you know what we have been sharing about working in Bitcoin. It’s mission-driven. It’s more remote. It’s startup energy — do the work, show the work.

But beyond the job market, Bitcoin teaches something deeper: focus. Signal over noise. What’s your one thing?

When your money is sound, you stop worrying about it. And when you stop worrying about money, you can finally focus on what actually matters — your craft, your family, your mission.

That’s what Bitcoin brings to the table. Not just jobs, but vocation.

Interested in Integrating This Data?

Are you a founder or leader in the Bitcoin space looking to integrate job postings or company profiles into your application?

Are you someone interested in gaining deeper insights beyond the charts?

Let’s talk – we’d love to hear your needs and explore how we can help!

Let’s Connect

This report is prepared by Mindaugas and if you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn and Nostr. I am happy to connect and have conversations with fellow Bitcoiners or data lovers.

This report combines Bitvocation's data analysis with AI-assisted writing to deliver insights efficiently.

Follow Bitvocation on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Telegram channel, follow Bitvocation Bot on Nostr and subscribe here on Substack for updates.

If you’ve ever bought a conference ticket only to find out later there was a discount code — this one’s for you.

We just launched our new and massively improved Bitcoin Conference Board: a living, curated overview of Bitcoin events happening around the world in 2026 and beyond. Built for people in, or entering, the Bitcoin industry.

Right now it’s focused on conferences. But our vision is bigger — we’re building this into a home for every type of Bitcoin-only event: hackathons, educational courses, online workshops, community meetups, and more. Offline or online, big or small.

Here’s a quick tour of what you can do with it.

Spot featured events instantly

At the top of the page, you’ll find a rotating carousel of featured events. These placements are a mix of events that either offer you a discount, or that we personally think are really worth your attention as someone building a career in Bitcoin.

Switch between list and calendar view

Prefer to see events laid out chronologically? Done. Want a visual calendar so you can spot which months are packed? One click. The toggle sits right at the top of the board — try both and see which works better for how you plan. (Tip: use the calendar view on mobile.)

Filter by continent, country, or timeframe

50+ events; 20+ countries so far. A lot to take in. Use the filters to narrow things down to what’s relevant for you — whether you’re based in Europe and want local events, or you’re planning a trip and want to see what’s happening in a specific region.

Find discounts before you buy

This is the part we’re most excited about.

We’re partnering with several event organisers to offer exclusive discounts to the Bitvocation community. When a discount is available, you’ll see the code displayed right next to the event — no hunting around, no guessing.

We keep adding new partnerships throughout the year. So bookmark this page and check it before you purchase any conference ticket. We also include a roundup of upcoming events — with any active discounts — in our newsletter once a month. If you’re subscribed, you’ll get a reminder straight to your inbox.

Submit your own event (coming soon)

The board is built for two audiences at once: people looking to attend Bitcoin events and find the best deals, and organizers who want to get their event in front of the right crowd.

We’re opening up submissions soon. Once live, anyone will be able to list a Bitcoin-only event directly on the board — conferences, hackathons, educational courses, online workshops, local meetups, you name it. If it’s Bitcoin-only and worth knowing about, it belongs here.

If you’re organizing an event and want to be listed now — or offer an exclusive discount to our community — reach out. We’d love to feature you and make this board the most comprehensive overview of Bitcoin-only events around the world.

Bookmark it. Share it. Use it.

The conference page is free, public, and updated regularly. Pass it along to anyone in your network navigating the Bitcoin event calendar this year.

And if you haven’t yet — subscribing to this newsletter means you’ll get the monthly conference digest automatically, with current discounts included.

Browse the Bitcoin Conferences Board

PS: Our episode of last week’s newsletter on the Bitcoin TL;DR podcast ranks already in the top 5 of their episodes! Thank you to everyone who’s checked it out! Give them a follow and 5 star rating on Spotify or a boost on Fountain if you enjoy what they do, and follow them on Nostr!

For decades, landing a job meant crafting the right CV, rehearsing the right answers, and hoping your experience ticked enough boxes. But that model is breaking down — especially in Bitcoin, where the industry moves fast and employers care far more about what you can do than where you’ve been. The question hiring teams at Bitcoin companies, startups, and protocols are now asking isn’t “what have you done?” — it’s “what can you uniquely do, right now, for us?”

The shift is profound: Bitcoin job seekers must stop thinking like candidates and start seeing themselves as small businesses.

Today’s newsletter is a collaboration with Podcasted! - the producers of Bitcoin TL;DR. If you prefer to be told about this content “by two friends” rather than read through this article, and you want to dive deeper into our research - check out their latest episode on Spotify or Fountain or wherever you’re listening.

You Are a Micro Business

Think about how a company goes to market. It doesn’t say, “We’ve been around for ten years.” It says: “We solve this specific problem, for this specific customer, better than anyone else.” It leads with value.

Bitcoin job seekers need to take the same approach. Instead of leading with job titles or career timelines, lead with your skills and the problems you solve. What is your area of expertise? Who benefits from it? What outcomes do you reliably deliver?

This reframe — from candidate to micro business — changes everything. Your CV becomes a value proposition. Your LinkedIn becomes a landing page. Your conversations with hiring managers stop being interviews and start being discovery calls.

Your Skills Are The Services You Offer

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: job titles are becoming hollow. “Marketing Manager” or “Operations Lead” tells an employer far less than it used to — and AI can now handle large portions of what those roles historically involved.

What cuts through the noise are specific, demonstrable skills.

• Can you explain Bitcoin’s monetary policy to institutional audiences with zero prior knowledge?

• Can you manage open-source contributor communities across time zones?

• Can you translate between protocol developers and product teams in ways that actually unblock things?

These are skills. These are the “products and services” you offer.

The Bitcoin job seekers who will thrive are those who can name their skills precisely, contextualise them with evidence, and connect them directly to the problems employers are losing sleep over.

Know your product.

Know yourself.

Now Add AI Agents

AI agents are software systems that don’t just answer questions — they take actions. They research, draft, analyse, schedule, code, and execute multi-step tasks with minimal human input. And critically, they operate through defined skills — discrete capabilities orchestrated together toward a goal.

A well-designed AI agent workflow looks like a well-run team: a capability for research, one for writing, one for analysis. Each skill is composable and purposeful. Together, they produce outcomes no single capability could achieve alone.

Mastering Agents Turns You Into An Agency

If AI agents are becoming a standard part of the workforce, the most effective Bitcoin job seekers won’t just compete with AI — they’ll orchestrate it. They’ll become, in the truest sense, an agency: a skilled operator who brings their own unique human capabilities and knows how to deploy AI agents to extend their reach, speed, and output.

Think about what this looks like in practice. A Bitcoin content strategist who crafts compelling narratives and deploys AI to research, repurpose, and distribute at scale. A protocol researcher who analyses proposals and uses agents to synthesise GitHub threads and mailing lists in hours rather than days. A recruiter who builds talent pipelines and uses AI agents to automate personalized follow-ups and real-time status updates - putting an end to ghosting once and for all.

In each case, the human brings what AI cannot: judgment, creativity, relational intelligence, contextual nuance. The AI agents bring what humans find costly: speed, scale, and tireless execution. Together, they operate like an agency. One person. Many capabilities. Significant output.

What This Means for Your Bitcoin Career Strategy

Audit your skills ruthlessly. Not your job titles — your actual capabilities. What do you know how to do that creates real value in Bitcoin?

Get specific about the problems you solve. “Good communicator” is noise. “Able to onboard non-technical users to self-custody Bitcoin solutions” is signal.

Build your AI agent layer. Identify tasks that are repetitive or research-heavy and learn to delegate them to AI. It’s not about replacing your expertise — it’s about multiplying your capacity.

The professionals who thrive in an AI agentic world understand that the game has elevated. Skills still matter. Problems still need solving. But the best players now show up with a full agency behind them.

Become a micro business. Lead with your skills. And bring your agents with you.

Looking for your next role in Bitcoin? Subscribe to our job feed to browse open positions and join our POW Lab — a Strategic Bitcoiners Reserve.

Looking to get more visibility for your Bitcoin business? Book an episode with Podcasted!’s podcast-as-a-service, or contact us to sponsor this newsletter.

This article was inspired by Sinead Bovell’s research. Follow her podcast!

Bitcoin conference season is under way! Every month we’ll see more and more events happening!

Remember, you get the best prices if you sign up early. Organisers reward you for early commitment and raise the prices slowly over time. But even if you missed the super lowest price - you can still get 10% off for many of them with our discount codes! (Good news - the Bitcoin Filmfest discount code is now live!)

Show me all details & ticket discounts!

The best conversation at a Bitcoin conference rarely happens on stage.

It happens in the hallway. By the coffee counter. Five minutes before the next talk starts, when someone turns to the person next to them and says, “So — what do you do?”

That question is a door.

And whether you walk through it confidently or fumble for words in the moment... well, that’s the difference between a conference that changes your career trajectory and one that was just a really good experience.

Here’s something worth thinking about before your next event: most people show up to conferences hoping things will happen to them. They collect name badges and follow the schedule and sit politely in rows listening to speakers.

The people who get the most out of conference season do the opposite. They decide, in advance, what they want. A conversation with a specific person. Three new contacts in a role they’re curious about. One real connection — not ten business cards, but one person they’ll still be talking to six months from now.

So before you pack your bag for Las Vegas, Dallas, Kreuzlingen or wherever April takes you — spend ten minutes answering this:

If this conference went really well for me, what would that look like?

Write it down. It changes everything.

And if you can’t make it to any events but still want to connect with other Bitcoiners who are serious about their careers — that’s exactly what the POW Lab is for.

Learn about the POW Lab

Speaking of good conversations - our friends at Podcasted! believe impactful conversations can also happen on your About page, in someone’s earbuds on a Sunday walk, or right before a potential client decides whether to trust you. That’s why they created their podcast-as-a-service - to help you get the word out about “your new thing” in a way that actually lands. Because let’s face it...

Nobody wants to be sold to. But everybody loves a good conversation.

Think about it - when a friend tells you about something they discovered, you actually listen. That’s exactly what a Podcasted! episode does for your business. Instead of a sales page people scroll past, you get a natural, two-host dialogue that tells your story the way a trusted friend would.

Embed it on your About page. Let it do the talking while you sleep. Watch it quietly work for your SEO too.

Bitcoin businesses, builders, authors - if you have a website, a blog post, or a paper that deserves more ears, submit the link and have your episode live within 48 hours. No recording. No editing. No fuss.

👉 Podcasted.info — the AI podcast-as-a-service behind Bitcoin TL;DR.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡

It’s International Women’s Day — a good moment to talk about something people still say surprisingly often:

“There are no women in Bitcoin.”

The truth is: they’re just less visible.

It’s true that there are far fewer women in Bitcoin than men. But after ten years in this industry, I can tell you: there are far more than there were a decade ago. I’ve got lots of Bitcoin girlfriends these days!

There are growing networks for women in Bitcoin, like Les Femmes Orange, and last week there was even a whole Bitcoin event dedicated to women, by women: Women of Bitcoin.

This is a call for women to dare to be more visible — and for the men to look a little harder.

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by our friends from Podcasted!

Have you launched a new product that needs to be explained to the world, or do you want to repurpose a series of essays? Get them podcasted into an engaging conversation and an SEO-boosting audio asset for your website with Podcasted.info — the AI podcast-as-a-service behind Bitcoin TL;DR!

We repurpose your content - Bitcoin websites, research papers, videos, blogs, or presentations - and convert them into professional two-host dialogue episodes published on Spotify, Apple, and Fountain. No recording needed. Follow us on Nostr and visit Podcasted.info for more info!

Just Because You Can’t See Them Doesn’t Mean They’re Not There

Here’s something I’ve noticed: women often don’t put themselves forward, especially not in an industry that still looks like a men’s world.

A couple of years ago I was at a conference where a podcaster interviewed 18 out of 20 speakers. The two he missed? The only two women on the programme. I was one of them. We found out later that every man he’d interviewed had simply walked up to him and said: “Hey, want to do an interview?” They invited themselves. We didn’t. Not because we had nothing to say — but because that’s not how many of us are wired. We were waiting to be invited.

Nobody was wrong. But something was missed.

Women also tend to check the team pages of companies before applying for jobs — to see whether there are other women there, or whether they’d be the only one.

Some women enjoy the challenge of being the first.

But many won’t even apply.

And here’s the thing: if women don’t dare to be the first female team member, or don’t dare to show up as speakers, content creators, or founders — if they continue to stay in the background — Bitcoin will forever look like a men’s domain, even though it isn’t.

Visibility changes perception.

Perception changes participation.

The more women appear publicly, the more normal it becomes for other women to join. Women need to see other women and think: “Huh. If she can do it, maybe I can too.”

A Note to Myself — and Maybe to You

Visibility doesn’t come naturally to me. Over ten years in this space, and I was invisible for the first eight of them. I’m much more comfortable behind the scenes than on a stage.

I make myself show up anyway. I have to — for Bitvocation. But also for other women. If they see me and others, hopefully they’ll give themselves permission to show up too.

Bitcoin is, genuinely, the most supportive industry I have ever worked in. Your fear of rejection might be more unfounded than you think. Dare to take the first step.

I’ve seen this firsthand in the POW Lab, our community for people building their Bitcoin careers (30% of which are women). Members have dared to teach Bitcoin beginners courses before they felt fully ready. Others have launched educational Instagram accounts, YouTube channels, online courses, and websites — from scratch. It’s possible. People are doing it. You can too.

The world can only invite you if you’re visible and findable.

What You Can Do Today

If you’re a woman in Bitcoin:

Show up a little more than feels comfortable. Post the thing. Apply for the role. Say yes to the stage. We need to see you — and so does the next woman who’s still on the fence.

If you’re a supporter of women in Bitcoin:

Give the women you admire a shoutout today. Make them visible. Send some followers their way. Actively recommend them as a podcast guest or conference speaker.

If you organise events or run a podcast:

Review how much visibility you’re giving women compared to men. And no — you shouldn’t add women to your speaker list just because they are women. Feature the people who can provide the most value. But before you go with whoever walked up to you first, ask yourself: “Have I actually considered all the experts on this topic?” Some of them might be women. The more women are actively invited to be visible, the less Bitcoin will look like a men’s world. Most will happily accept your invitation, even if they’d never have asked.

If you’re a VC or run pitch events:

Consider whether the Silicon Valley pitch contest format — founders on one side, money on the other — actually works for everyone. Are there really no female founders in Bitcoin, or does this format simply not suit them? Even one woman on the judging panel could make a meaningful difference.

Bitcoin Is Energy

The humans who build it, nurture it, and grow it bring energy too. Masculine energy. Feminine energy.

We are all responsible for the energy we bring to this ecosystem — so that Bitcoin can truly reach everyone.

I’m looking forward to SEEING more and more women on this path!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡

The reason many people struggle to land a job isn’t a lack of experience, intelligence, or motivation. They’re getting stopped much earlier in the process:

Their CV never reaches a human.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are now the default gatekeepers for hiring — even at Bitcoin companies. And while most people know about obvious issues like missing keywords or fancy layouts, there are much quieter traps that can filter you out without warning.

Important context:
All sources referenced in this article come from the fiat job market. However, ATS systems work the same everywhere. While very small Bitcoin startups may still hire manually, larger Bitcoin companies — especially those scaling quickly — often use the same tooling as the rest of the tech world. So it’s best to be prepared.

Let’s go through the ones almost nobody talks about.

The quiet ATS mistakes that kill otherwise strong CVs

1. Inconsistent fonts across sections

Using one font for headers and another for body text looks harmless — but some ATS parsers treat this as inconsistent structure.

Result: sections are misread, skipped, or incorrectly weighted.

👉 Fix:
Use one single font throughout. Same family, same weight system. Boring is good.

Source: jobease.ca

2. Contact details in a “creative” order

ATS systems expect boring, predictable structure.

If your contact details don’t follow a standard hierarchy — for example, if LinkedIn comes before email, or location is buried — the parser may fail to extract them at all.

No contact details = auto-reject.

👉 Fix:
Always use this order at the top:

Full name
Phone number
Email address
Location (City, Country)
LinkedIn (optional, last)

Source: jobease.ca

3. Mixed date formats

This one is surprisingly common.

Using Dec 2023 in one role and 12/2023 in another can confuse timeline parsing. Some ATS rely on strict chronological logic.

👉 Fix:
Pick one date format and use it everywhere.
Example: Jan 2022 – Dec 2023

Source: jobease.ca

4. Skills section buried at the bottom

Many ATS scan skills first, long before work experience.

If your skills are tucked away on page two, the system may never associate you with the role’s core requirements — even if you’re a perfect match.

👉 Fix:
Place your Skills section immediately after your summary or profile.

Source: jobease.ca

This one matters for humans too! We recently had a Bitcoin recruiter join one of our POW Lab community calls, and she confirmed something important:

Recruiters spend roughly 5-10 seconds per cv on the first pass.

That means your most relevant skills — and your passion for Bitcoin — need to appear at the very top!

5. Acronyms without spelling them out

ATS systems don’t “understand context.” They match text.

If the job description says Customer Relationship Management and your CV only says CRM, you might miss the match entirely.

👉 Fix:
Spell it out once, then use the acronym:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Source: jobease.ca

6. Tables — even simple ones

Tables are a layout trick humans love and ATS hate.

Many systems read tables out of order, column by column, or ignore them completely.

👉 Fix:
Never use tables for:

• skills

• work experience

• summaries

• contact info

Use clean, linear text only.

Source: jobease.ca

7. Creative section headers

“Professional Journey” sounds great.
ATS doesn’t care.

Most systems rely on exact, boring section names to classify your information.

👉 Fix:
Use standard headers only:

• Work Experience

• Skills

• Education

• Certifications

Save creativity for interviews.

Source: jobease.ca

8. Fancy bullet points and icons

Arrows, icons, emoji bullets, custom symbols — all can break parsing.

What looks clean to you may appear as noise to the system.

👉 Fix:
Use simple bullets only:

• Hyphen -

• Standard dot •

Source: scale.jobs

9. Scanned or image-based PDFs

If your CV is a scan — or a PDF created in a way that flattens text into images — the ATS literally can’t read it.

It doesn’t “try harder.” It just rejects it.

👉 Fix:
Use:

• .docx, or

• a searchable (text-based) PDF

Source: scale.jobs

10. Algorithmic scoring and automated ranking

Some ATS use machine-learning models to rank resumes based on patterns in past hiring data — not on nuance or intent.

This can disadvantage:

• career switchers

• non-linear backgrounds

• unconventional experience

You can’t fully control this, but you can reduce friction.

👉 Fix:

• Mirror job description language precisely

• Avoid unnecessary personal details

• Focus on role-relevant outcomes

Source: collegerecruiter.com

What about photos on a CV?

Short answer: don’t include one — especially if you’re applying internationally.

Here’s why:

• Parsing issues

Embedded images can break text flow, cause skipped sections, or confuse the document structure.

Source: davron.net

• File format problems

Photos increase the risk of creating non-searchable PDFs — which ATS can’t read.

Source: reallifecareeradvice.com

• Bias amplification

Even when not intended, visual data can subtly influence AI-driven scoring models.

Source: jobscan.co

• Regional mismatch

Photos are common in some European countries, but many ATS are built for US-style resumes and penalize them silently.

👉 Best practice:
No photo on an ATS CV.
If a company truly wants one, share it later — via LinkedIn or after first contact.

Final checklist (bookmark this)

Before applying, ask yourself:

• One font, everywhere?

• Skills near the top?

• No tables, icons, or fancy bullets?

• Standard section headers?

• One consistent date format?

• No photo?

• Searchable file format?

If the answer to all of these is yes — you’ve removed a huge amount of invisible friction.

How to stop dealing with ATS altogether

The most reliable way to avoid ATS systems is not to perfect your CV — it’s to make them irrelevant.

At Bitvocation, we’re all about becoming FINDABLE. When you’re findable, opportunities and jobs come to you, rather than you having to chase them.

You may still be asked for your CV after someone has already found you and is genuinely interested in you — but at that point, they’re not running it through an ATS.

ATS systems are for strangers.

Once you’ve been found, you’re not a stranger anymore.

Becoming FINDABLE means:

• Showing your proof of work publicly and consistently

• Connecting with as many people in the industry as possible and building real relationships. In the Bitcoin network, both quantity and quality matter.

• Being a good node on the network. Be someone people enjoy helping. Be someone others want to work with.

That’s how you take ownership of your Bitcoin career and build your reputation.

PS: We help people become FINDABLE through our POW Lab.
More details here.

It’s frustrating. It can make you feel ignored, dismissed — invisible.

But before you assume the worst, pause for a moment and consider the reality on the other side.

Anyone actively building in Bitcoin today lives inside a constant stream of noise: Slack pings. Telegram groups. Signal threads. Email. Nostr. LinkedIn requests that turn out to be bots, pitches, or scripts sprayed to a thousand people at once. Conference chats. DMs from strangers. DMs from bots pretending not to be strangers.

Every message that arrives is not just a message. It’s a task.

When you reach out to someone, you are adding yet another item to their already extensive to-do list. We all have limited time. And time is even more valuable than bitcoin.

So we allocate our attention carefully and prioritize.

How do we do that?

• By level of relationship.

• By status.

• By “what’s in it for me?”

If you’re the other person’s boss, their most valuable client, or the love of their life — it’s highly likely you’ll get a fast response.

If your name is Michael Saylor or Jack Mallers — or some other well-known person in the space — you’ll probably also have a 99% response rate.

And if your message contains the answer to their prayers, same story.

But if you’re a stranger?

You land at the bottom.

That’s not arrogance on their part. It’s focus.

We’re all doing exactly the same thing in our own inboxes.

And there’s another thing to consider: these days, messages don’t just represent tasks. They increasingly represent risk. In our industry especially, phishing emails are daily occurrences and live deepfake calls are no longer science fiction. Every unknown message requires caution.

So the real question becomes:

How do you move up the priority list?

You have to earn people’s attention and trust.

• Start building the relationship in public.

• Build your proof of work.

• Learn how to write more effective messages.

Before sending a DM, engage in the comments. Especially on LinkedIn. Add value. Not just “Great post!” but something thoughtful and relevant. Do it more than once. When your name appears consistently in a constructive way, it starts to feel familiar to the other person.

When someone has seen your name adding intelligent commentary a handful of times, you’re no longer a complete stranger. So when you eventually do send a private message, it will feel different.

Still — don’t send a DM with a request right away.

Send a compliment. Share a helpful piece of information. Send something that makes them smile.

💡 Tip:

Sometimes the most powerful line you can include is this:

“No reply needed, just sharing.”

It sounds simple, but it changes the entire dynamic.

It communicates:
I respect your time.
I know you’re busy.
I’m not assigning you work.
I don’t expect anything from you.

You may find this is a hack — because, ironically, that’s often what gets the reply.

💡 Here’s another one:

Send your message right before conferences and events.

If the other person is speaking at an event you’re attending, write to them ahead of time. Tell them you appreciated something specific they built or shared. Mention you’ll be at the same event and are looking forward to their talk. Don’t ask for a meeting. Don’t put pressure on them.

Very often you’ll get a response like: “Thanks! Stop by our booth and say hi.”

Now you’ve created context.

At the event, when you introduce yourself and refer to that message, you’re no longer a complete stranger. You’re someone who already made a small, respectful connection.

If you’re interested in collaborating with Bitvocation by sponsoring this newsletter, get in touch! You can see our views and engagement rates in the last section of our Annual Report here.

DM’s are like prompts

Communicate clearly. Make it effortless for the recipient. Treat your message like a prompt for an AI: if your input is bad, the output will be bad.

Make your intention clear in the subject line. If the recipient can see from the preview alone, that “this is just a 10-second task”, your odds of receiving a reply are going way up!

Most people genuinely like to help — especially if there’s already some form of connection. But you do need to make it easy for them.

If your message is vague, overly long, or requires heavy thinking before they even understand what you want, you’ll likely never hear back.

A confused mind always says no.

At Bitvocation, we see the other side of this every day.

We cannot reply to every single message on every single channel. We often receive messages along the lines of “I’m looking for a Bitcoin job. Do you have anything?” But we need to trust that if the sender found our contact form, they’ll also find our free job feeds (or the POW Lab, if they want us to know them personally).

We also get a lot of very vague applications for our BTX programme and had to make the decision to only respond to the clearest proposals.

Effective written communication is really important if you want to be the signal amongst the noise. You’ve got all the AI tools at your disposal for that. You can always ask “How can I say this in the shortest, kindest and most effective way?” before you hit Send.

So if you’re not getting replies, it’s not because you’re not good enough.

It’s because your industry reputation, your relationship with the recipient, or your written communication isn’t strong enough yet.

The solution isn’t more outreach. It’s visibility.

Comment. Publish. Contribute. Be visible.

Build relationships long before you need something from them.

When Bitvocation started, nobody knew us. Many people didn’t take us seriously. Now, two years in — after consistent proof of work and relationship building — things are shifting. We get more Yes’es when we reach out. And more people reach out to us first, because we’re on their radar.

We became visible.
We became findable.

Keep building your proof of work.
Keep refining your communication skills.
Stack contacts and connections like you’re stacking sats.

Low time preference wins in Bitcoin.

This article was inspired by conversations in the POW Lab Telegram group. Join us!

March looks modest compared to the wave of events in February. But the year is packed — and we’ve secured additional ticket discounts for you.

Show me all details & ticket discounts!

Join MADBitcoin Summit in Madrid as a volunteer

Our latest event partnership is with MADBitcoin Summit, taking place May 9–12 in Madrid, Spain.

They’re offering:

• 🎟 10% off tickets with code BITVOCATION10

• 🙌 A chance to volunteer at the event

If you’re serious about working in Bitcoin, this second option might be even more powerful.

It’s strategy.

It’s value for value.

Here’s why:

1. Exposure (the good kind).
When you volunteer, you’re not hiding in the audience. You’re visible. You interact with speakers, organizers, founders, sponsors. People see your name tag. They see your initiative.

2. Network density.
In four days, you’ll meet more Bitcoiners than you might meet in six months online. Real conversations. Real context. Real follow-ups.

3. Immersion.
You absorb the culture. The language. The energy. The current debates. You become sharper — not just in knowledge, but in signal.

4. Proof of Work.
Helping run an event is contribution.
It’s participation.
It’s skin in the game.

That’s something you can reference later — on LinkedIn, in interviews, and in conversations.

5. Increased Findability.
The more you show up in real spaces, the more your name starts circulating naturally.
Opportunities in Bitcoin tend to come through proximity and reputation — not cold applications.

Volunteers will support with reception, guidance at the venue, and general event organization.

If you’re interested, contact Aldona, the organiser, directly at:
aldona@madbitcoin.org

Maybe we’ll see each other there.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡

One takeaway stood out immediately:

The biggest winners aren’t the most credentialed specialists.
They’re generalists with agency.

If you’re working in Bitcoin — or trying to — that should sound familiar.

Because Bitcoin has always rewarded the same trait.

Who Will Win in an AI World

According to Amjad Masad, the winners aren’t the “smartest” people on paper.

They’re generalists with agency.

People who
see gaps
notice friction
feel quietly annoyed by inefficient processes

…and then do something about them.

Amjad calls this being “lazy” — in the best possible way:
people who don’t want to do repetitive, dumb work,
so they build systems that remove it.

That’s exactly how Bitvocation started
(though I’d personally call it efficiency, not laziness :).

I didn’t think:

“I should build a career platform.”

I thought:

“Why is it so insanely cumbersome to search dozens of job boards for Bitcoin-specific jobs? Why don’t these just land on my phone?”

That’s how our Bitcoin Job feed on Telegram was born.

No grand master plan.
No polished strategy deck.

Just a generalist seeing a gap — and closing it.

Why Generalists Will Beat Specialists

One of the spiciest opinions from the interview:

Traditional engineers often make the worst AI “vibe coders”.

Why?

Because they have too much to unlearn.

They micromanage the AI.
They fight the tool instead of collaborating with it.

We’ve seen this pattern before.

Economists were late to Bitcoin.
Finance professionals resisted it the longest.

Heavy institutional training can make letting go harder.

Meanwhile, people who ask,

“Could this be easier?”

quietly overtake them.

Who Will Struggle

This part is uncomfortable — but important.

The people most at risk are:

• narrow specialists

• people doing repetitive knowledge work

• people who define their worth by how hard something is to do manually

If your daily work feels like:

• moving data between tools

• writing the same reports

• manually researching things AI can summarize in seconds

You’re already competing with a machine.

And the machine doesn’t get tired.

The Internal Ego Battle (This Is the Quiet One)

For some people, the challenge won’t be technical.

It will be emotional.

Especially for
highly intellectual professionals,
creatives,
writers,
coders —

anyone who fears “losing their edge”.

That fear is human.
And valid.

But embracing AI doesn’t have to mean giving up your intelligence
or outsourcing your creativity.

What if it did the opposite?

What if removing repetitive busywork —
the stuff that quietly clogs your mental bandwidth —
gave you more space for intuition, clarity, and your best thinking?

What if you didn’t lose sovereignty by using better tools —
but gained leverage?

The Real Divide: Agency vs Comfort

People with agency and AI mastery will thrive.
People defending old ways of working will fall behind.

AI rewards people who:

• experiment without being told

• learn in public

• adapt fast

Bitcoin employers told us the same thing in our 2025 Annual Survey.

Bitcoin has always selected for agency.

AI just accelerates that filter.

If you take only one thing from this:
don’t wait until AI feels comfortable. Start while it still feels awkward.

What To Do Now (Practical, Not Theoretical)

1. Train your attention

Notice one repetitive or annoying task you do regularly — in work or life — and try to eliminate it with AI.

Explore vibe-coding apps like Replit, Lovable, Manus, or similar.
You don’t need to pick “the best one”.
You just need to start.

2. Build a tiny thing

Don’t binge AI content.

Open an app.
Type a prompt.
See what happens.
Refine.

Build:

• a tiny tool

• a dashboard

• a workflow

• a bot

• a helper script

Useless is fine.
Finished beats perfect.

When Manus first came out, I built the world’s most minimalist hashtag-based to-do list.

It didn’t work.
It typed words backwards.

It was useless. But that wasn’t the point.

The point was to get started. To demonstrate — to myself — what might be possible if I kept going.

3. Think like a generalist founder

Ask yourself daily:

• What feels broken?

• What’s unnecessarily manual?

• What workaround do people accept — but secretly hate?

That’s where opportunities live now.

And very often,
that’s where your future job is hiding.

The Bitvocation Angle

Here’s the upside.

Bitcoiners are unusually well positioned for this shift.

You already:

• question systems

• value sovereignty

• build outside institutions

• learn in public and document proof of work

• adapt faster than most

AI is not the enemy of Bitcoin careers.

It’s a multiplier — if you use it.

Remember: you can just build things.

PS:
If you’ve been building AI agents, tools, or automation flows in your spare time and you’re looking for a real-world use case to turn it into visible proof of work for your CV — check out our BTX programme.

Watch the full interview with Amjad here (highly recommended):

We’re happy to present the second edition of the Bitvocation Annual Bitcoin Job Market Report.

When we published our first report a year ago, Bitvocation was still young — a fast-growing job feed, a Telegram group, and a conviction that the Bitcoin job market could be more transparent, more efficient, and more human.

Since then, Bitvocation has grown — and so has our understanding of what the Bitcoin job market actually needs.

Today, we’re building toward something bigger: human infrastructure for the Bitcoin economy, powered by people, data, and signal.

This year, our work took us deeper into the human side of Bitcoin careers.

Through our community, our datasets, and countless conversations, one thing became clear:

People aren’t leaving fiat jobs because they want to “work in tech.”
They’re leaving because they want to work in alignment.

They’re looking for freedom, sovereignty, purpose, and a mission that actually matters.
And they want to build alongside others who feel the same way.

Our mission remains the same.

What has changed is the clarity with which we understand the role we’re playing — and how that clarity has shaped our vision.

⭐️ Mission

To make the Bitcoin job market transparent, human-centered, data-driven, and accessible — so Bitcoin Professionals can build meaningful careers, and Bitcoin companies can find talent that truly understands and contributes to the mission.

⭐️ Vision

A global resource platform and digital Bitcoin Circular Economy for careers — where talent and sats flow, and people thrive doing work they believe in.

We are not just a job platform.
We are not recruiters or headhunters.

We’re building infrastructure for:

• Bitcoin companies looking for truly Bitcoin-aligned talent

• Bitcoin Professionals seeking meaningful, mission-driven work

• Investors who want to understand where talent and innovation are moving

• Journalists and researchers who need reliable Bitcoin job market data

• Students and early-career Bitcoiners entering the ecosystem

And most importantly, we’re building this for the humans behind Bitcoin.

Without this human layer, the network doesn’t grow.
Without talent, adoption doesn’t scale.
Without people, Bitcoin is just code.

This report is our contribution to mapping that human landscape.

Inside, you’ll find the most complete Bitcoin job dataset we’ve produced so far — alongside new insights into hiring patterns, employer expectations, and the lived experience of Bitcoin Professionals navigating today’s job market.

View the Report Here

We hope this report helps you — whether you’re hiring, job searching, investing, building, or researching — better understand the human side of Bitcoin’s growth.

Please share it with your friends in our industry!

With gratitude and excitement for the year ahead,

Anja Schuetz
Founder, Bitvocation

Before diving in, an important caveat: this data is anecdotal. Our sample was small (fewer than 20 participants) and deeply Bitcoin-native. Builders have no time to fill in surveys 🙂 so this is not a statistically representative snapshot of the entire Bitcoin job market.

That said, the repetition of themes was striking — and offered a clear signal for anyone who wants to build a career in Bitcoin.

The Hiring Climate: More Applicants, Higher Standards

Whether hiring felt “easy” or “hard” in 2025 depended entirely on the role.

Several employers reported being flooded with applicants. At the same time, truly specialized roles remained difficult to fill. Rust developers, Bitcoin Core engineers, and Lightning Network experts continued to be scarce. High-signal talent in these areas was still the bottleneck.

Beyond engineering, there was a growing shortage of Bitcoin-native non-technical professionals. Employers repeatedly pointed to the need for marketers, growth leads, and operators who could translate deeply technical concepts into clear narratives — without diluting them or slipping into “crypto” language.

Being good at marketing isn’t enough. Being fluent in Bitcoin culture matters.

The Core Requirement: Agency

If one word dominated the 2025 survey responses, it was agency.

Not experience.
Not years in the industry.
Agency.

Employers consistently said they were not looking for people who waited for instructions. They were looking for people who took ownership — especially in early-stage environments where clarity was limited and playbooks rarely existed.

“I am missing agency — people actually being interested in what they work on and being motivated.”

Team Lead, Bitcoin Tech Startup

In Bitcoin startups, agency showed up as:

• a can-do attitude

• a tinkering mentality

• the willingness to figure things out without perfect specs

• and the ability to ship in imperfect conditions

At Bitvocation, we see agency closely tied to findability. Candidates with agency don’t just apply for jobs — they focus on becoming visible nodes in the network. They build relationships, show up at conferences, contribute publicly, and make it easier for opportunities to find them.

Agency isn’t a personality trait. It’s a behavior - and it can be intentionally adopted.

Proof of Work Is the Real Resume

One message came through clearly in 2025: the generic CV matters less and less.

What employers trust is Proof of Work.

That includes open-source contributions, grassroots initiatives, public writing or speaking, and any tangible signal that shows real understanding of Bitcoin — not just familiarity.

“Treat your CV as a base only… be visible and known enough to be suggested for a particular job; do your Proof of Work.”

Şelale, Bitcoin Filmfest

The strongest candidates are those who can demonstrate how their existing professional wins solve real problems for Bitcoin companies today.

Self-custody, continuous learning, and skin in the game frequently carried more weight than traditional credentials.

AI: Literacy Without Laziness

AI played an increasingly visible role in 2025. Many companies automated routine tasks, while others introduced new AI-adjacent roles.

AI literacy became expected.
AI dependency did not.

“I can teach a good dev without AI skills how to use AI within a week. Teaching a bad dev with AI skills how to write good code will take ages.”

Lead Developer, Bitcoin Startup

Several employers warned explicitly against using AI to outsource personality — especially in cover letters and applications. In an industry that values agency and authenticity, generic AI-generated applications are often seen as a red flag.

AI works best as a multiplier of thinking, not a replacement for it.

The Bitcoin-Native Lifestyle

For many companies, working in Bitcoin in 2025 meant living in Bitcoin — not necessarily being paid fully in BTC, but being an experienced user of Bitcoin and its technology, and actively immersed in the Bitcoin community.

Cultural and ethos alignment are often non-negotiable, especially for leadership or community-facing roles.

What 2025 Taught Us Going Into 2026

Looking back, most employers described 2025 as a year of selective growth. Expansion was expected — but standards were rising.

“Bitcoin changes fast. Always be networking and planning for your next job.”

Ed Juline, Bitcoin Treasuries Media

In practice, agency often showed up long before a job offer — through visibility, proof of work, and being an active node in the Bitcoin network.

The candidates who stood out in 2025 were those who combined professional competence with Bitcoin ethos — and who demonstrated, through action, that they had the agency to help build the future of money and take ownership of their own careers.

This article expands on the data and methodology behind our 2025 Annual Bitcoin Job Market Report. View the full report here.

We’re not.

We don’t do headhunting, and we don’t collect CVs in a database.

What we are building is a Bitcoin talent pool.

Bitcoin startups don’t lack candidates.

What they often lack is access to the right ones — people with deep Bitcoin culture alignment, at a price they can actually afford.

Traditional headhunters charge 20–30% of annual salary, which is rarely realistic for early-stage teams. Meanwhile, hiring via LinkedIn or job boards is noisy, time-consuming, and poorly optimized for Bitcoin culture fit.

That’s why Bitvocation is building a Strategic Bitcoiners Reserve: a high-signal talent pool and a practical first point of contact for Bitcoin startups when they’re hiring.

This allows founders to access Bitcoin-aligned professionals at a far lower cost than traditional recruitment.

If we have the right person, we save founders time, energy, and money.
If we don’t, they can continue their search through the usual channels.

We don’t try to replace every hiring channel.
We aim to be the highest-signal, lowest-friction starting point.

How We Build a Strategic Bitcoiners Reserve

The POW Lab is where this reserve is formed.
POW, of course, stands for Proof of Work.

The POW Lab is a private, high-touch environment where Bitcoin professionals spend time together over months, not weeks. We don’t just review profiles — we hang out with our members.

Inside the POW Lab Pro Telegram group, we see:

• how people think and communicate

• what they contribute

• how much ownership and agency they naturally take

In some cases, POW Lab members even join the Bitvocation team temporarily through our BTX programme. This allows us to collaborate directly and experience first-hand what it’s actually like to work with them.

That level of proximity can’t be replicated by CV screening or interviews alone.

Several members have found their first Bitcoin job this way — by being visible, useful, and trusted over time.

Skin in the Game: The POW Lab is a Membership

POW Lab members don’t join casually.
Access to the POW Lab is paid, and members pay in sats.

That matters for two reasons.

First, it’s a seriousness filter. Paying sats signals genuine commitment to building a Bitcoin career, not just casual or opportunistic interest.

Second, it’s a practical competence filter. Members need to know how to:

• make a Lightning payment

• actually use Bitcoin as money

That alone removes a surprising amount of noise.

This approach helps us maintain high signal and trust — both for candidate recommendations and for the community itself. People don’t just join the POW Lab to find opportunities; they join to spend time with other Bitcoiners.

For this reason, the POW Lab community has grown slowly but steadily, and we’ll likely cap POW Lab Pro at around 100 members to preserve its quality and intimacy.

This does not mean our talent pool is capped.

With POW Lab Lite, Bitcoiners can join our talent database without all POW Lab Pro benefits — allowing the Strategic Bitcoiners Reserve to grow while the core community stays small and high-trust.

Join the POW Lab here

Why We Don’t Use CVs

Members of our talent pool don’t join by uploading a résumé.

Instead, they enter by answering 21 detailed questions covering:

• values and beliefs

• professional background and expertise

• motivation for working in Bitcoin

• ways of working and decision-making

• long-term direction

This provides far more meaningful signal than a CV ever could. It also gives members clarity—and a better way to articulate what they’re actually looking for.

A résumé shows where someone has been.
Our intake shows why they’re here and how they think.

That’s what makes recommendations so efficient.

When Bitcoin founders approach us for talent:

• often, someone is already top of mind

• otherwise, we can quickly consult our talent database and identify strong matches based on real context — not keyword matching

We either have the right person — or we don’t.
And if we don’t, we say so.

The POW Lab Talent Pool: Bitcoiners With Agency, Not Just Job Seekers

At the time of writing, the POW Lab Pro community consists of roughly 50 members.

We don’t call them job seekers. We call them career builders.

Most are currently successful in fiat careers, but they are Bitcoiners through and through — culturally aligned, deeply involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and intentionally preparing for a long-term transition into Bitcoin-native work.

They don’t join the POW Lab to apply for jobs.

They join to align their career with Bitcoin by:

• building proof of work and their Bitcoin network

• contributing to Bitcoin projects

• running nodes, side hustles, meetups, and businesses

Through their own efforts, the connections inside the POW Lab, and our guidance, members make themselves increasingly findable by founders and recruiters. They don’t rely on Bitvocation to “place” them in roles — we equip them with the tools, context, and network to create opportunities themselves.

And yes — most of them are also available for hire by Bitcoin startups looking for people with agency, ownership, and genuine culture fit.

That’s what makes the POW Lab a Strategic Bitcoiners Reserve, not just a talent database.

Join the POW Lab here

Who’s in the POW Lab?

The POW Lab brings together Bitcoiners from across industries and geographies, united by strong Bitcoin culture fit and high agency.

Most members are non-developers seeking remote roles, with backgrounds spanning finance, engineering, operations, and communication. They come from demanding, high-stakes environments where responsibility, ownership, and competence are non-negotiable.

Skills That Actually Matter to Bitcoin Startups

Across the POW Lab, members collectively cover the full lifecycle of a Bitcoin company — from technical infrastructure and operations to compliance, go-to-market, and growth.

This includes engineering and systems thinking, operational and risk expertise, business development, and modern AI-assisted workflows.

Bitcoin startups don’t need people who wait for instructions.
They need people who figure things out.

That’s the default mode inside the POW Lab.

Why They Choose Bitcoin (and Leave Fiat Behind)

Most POW Lab members didn’t stumble into Bitcoin casually. Their career shift is the result of years of study, conviction, and personal proof of work.

Three motivations come up again and again.

1. Financial Sovereignty & Truth

Many have witnessed the fragility of the legacy system firsthand — inflation, bank failures, opaque decision-making. Bitcoin’s fixed supply and transparency represent honest weights and measures in contrast.

2. Proof of Work as a Life Philosophy

Bitcoin’s meritocracy resonates deeply. Members value showing their work, taking ownership, and being accountable for outcomes — not navigating internal politics or rent-seeking structures.

3. Building Something That Lasts

For many, working in Bitcoin is about legacy. Building tools, infrastructure, and systems that help the next generation live more sovereign lives. This isn’t a short-term career move — it’s a long-term commitment.

Join the POW Lab here

The POW Lab as a Signal Layer

The POW Lab functions as a signal layer for the Bitcoin industry.

It’s a place where Bitcoin-aligned professionals build reputation, relationships, and proof of work — long before a job title enters the conversation.

For Bitcoin founders, this means:

• direct access to Bitcoiners like you

• people already aligned with the mission and ready to contribute

• professionals who don’t need to be “orange-pilled” before they can be effective

For Bitcoiners considering the leap:

• you don’t have to quit your fiat job first

• you can build credibility, visibility, and optionality while still employed

• you join a room of peers who are already walking the same path

A Quiet Advantage for Bitcoin Startups

Any startup looking for Bitcoiners with agency and genuine culture fit will find strong matches inside the POW Lab.

Not because we optimize for volume —
but because we optimize for alignment.

If you’re building in Bitcoin and want access to people who think in long time horizons, understand the mission, and can operate without a playbook, the POW Lab talent pool is designed for exactly that.

And if you’re a Bitcoiner in a fiat career, quietly building skills and conviction and wondering where you’d actually belong —

you’ll feel at home here.

This article expands on the data and methodology behind our 2025 Annual Bitcoin Job Market Report. View the full report here.

Throughout 2025, we’ve spent a lot of time exploring one difficult question:
What actually qualifies as a Bitcoin company?

Not philosophically — but practically. For a scraper. For a job feed. For people who want signal, not noise.

The problem with defining “Bitcoin companies”

At first glance, this should be straightforward. In reality, the Bitcoin ecosystem is layered.

There are:

• Bitcoin-only startups

• Bitcoin-first companies

• Bitcoin-adjacent companies

• Exchanges, miners, energy companies, Bitcoin Treasury companies

• Multi-currency software and hardware providers

All of them offer Bitcoin-related services. Many also offer other services or cryptocurrencies. Some pay their staff in Bitcoin. Some publish dozens of job openings in a single day.

The real challenge is deciding which companies and roles are relevant to our audience.

All of them are interested in Bitcoin — but they relate to it differently, and some are more “maxi” than others.

Our working definition of a Bitcoin company

As a foundation for our discussions, we’ve been working on an internal definition of what we consider a Bitcoin-only company:

1. Bitcoin-only products
   Core products and services are exclusively focused on Bitcoin, with no competing cryptocurrencies.

2. Publicly stated commitment
   The company explicitly identifies as Bitcoin-only or Bitcoin-focused in its mission or communications.

3. Ecosystem contribution
   Active participation in Bitcoin development, open-source projects, or the Bitcoin community.

This definition creates clarity and distinction. We’re not optimizing for maximum coverage or quantity — we’re optimizing for quality and signal.

Once you adopt a stricter definition, the downstream effects on the job feed become obvious.

Signal vs. volume

Here’s the challenge.

On one side:

• Bitcoin-adjacent companies dramatically increase job volume

• Larger companies post more frequently

• If our only focus were impressions and reach, this would be great for us

On the other side:

• A single company can dominate the feed for an entire day

• Smaller Bitcoin-only startups get buried

• The feed becomes noisy, harder to scan, and cognitively expensive

We could optimize for volume and growth.

But we keep coming back to the same question:

Who is the feed actually for?

Why we lean toward signal

The Bitvocation job feed is meant to be high-signal for Bitcoin Professionals.

In practice, that might mean fewer jobs — but higher relevance per scroll.

Where Bitcoin-adjacent jobs fit in

Importantly, none of this means Bitcoin-adjacent jobs aren’t valuable.

They absolutely are.

What we’re exploring is a separation between signal and subjective completeness.

Our new web-based version of the job feed allows us to do exactly that, and it will be available as part of the POW Lab. Going forward, we’re separating the POW Lab into a Pro and Lite tier — both of which include access to the web feed.

Subscribers will have the ability to:

• access a full web-based job feed

• see a larger number of jobs, including Bitcoin-adjacent companies

• filter, search, and set “favorite” companies to follow more closely

• avoid overwhelming public channels

In other words:

• the public feed can stay focused for those who prefer high-signal and “less is more”

• active Bitcoin job seekers who want more can opt into depth and breadth

This structure did not exist in our job feeds in 2025. Over the course of 2026, we plan to implement this distinction more clearly — even if that reduces total job volume or impressions. The goal is not “more jobs,” but better signal.

Any Bitcoin Professional who wants to cast a wider net — by seeing Bitcoin-related jobs in an organized, non-overwhelming way and becoming part of our talent pool — can do so by supporting Bitvocation with a small amount of sats via the POW Lab.

We believe this approach better serves different segments of our audience and meaningfully addresses the signal-over-noise challenge.

This article expands on the data and methodology behind our 2025 Annual Bitcoin Job Market Report. [Link will be provided here once avaialable at the end of January.]

Wow — judging by this list alone, the Bitcoin year is officially in motion - starting with Plan B Academy on February 2nd.

Show me all details & ticket discounts!

Plan B Academy isn’t a conference — it’s an educational programme for Bitcoiners who want to deepen their fundamentals and seriously explore a career in Bitcoin.

There are two tracks:

• a Business track

• a Developer track

According to Plan B, several alumni went on to land jobs at Bitcoin startups after completing the programme — which is exactly why we’re paying attention.

Several POW Lab members will be participating this year, and tomorrow (January 12) we’re hosting a private AMA with representatives from the Plan B Network inside the POW Lab, so members can ask questions and sanity-check whether it’s the right move before committing.

If you’re thinking about it too, we’ve got you covered:

💥 Use discount code BITVOCATION to save 15% on enrollment.

While we’re still updating the full conference overview, one event you can already block in your calendar is the second edition of BTCHEL this September.

Last year’s first edition was genuinely a blast — great people, strong content, and a very Bitcoin-native vibe. If you’re looking for a conference that’s not just noise, Helsinki is a solid bet.

🎟 Use discount code BITVOCATION to get 10% off your ticket.

Other Bitcoin events we’re excited about this year

We’re arranging more ticket discounts throughout the year and will keep updating the overview. Bookmark it and check it before you buy your tickets. We curate this list so you can choose events with intent — to learn, connect, and become more findable.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡

December Key Takeaways

• 113 jobs posted in December 2025, down 24% from November

• Entry-level and unpaid roles nearly vanished — dropping from 27 to just 4 jobs

• Senior positions grew — experienced talent stays in demand

• 47% remote — highest in three months

• The year’s pattern: strong start, cautious finish — mirroring Bitcoin market sentiment

Hey Bitcoiners,

The year ends quieter than it began. December’s market was selective — fewer companies, fewer roles, but a clear signal in the data.

Experience and proof of work matters. While overall numbers dropped, senior positions actually grew. Entry-level nearly disappeared.

This is the final monthly report of 2025. We’re preparing a full year report with trends, patterns, and insights across all 12 months — coming soon.

Ok, no more talks, let’s look at how December closed out the year!

How many Bitcoin Jobs were there in December 2025?

113 jobs. 🟠 38 Bitcoin-only. 75 Other.

What Does the Bitcoin Job Market Trend Look Like?

December was the quietest month of 2025. Year-over-year, we’re down 6% from last December — not a collapse, but a cooling.

The pause from November continues. Looking at the chart, the last five months form a near-perfect pyramid — October at the peak, August and December at the base.

But this doesn’t mean Bitcoin jobs are disappearing. In 2026, we’re expanding our data coverage to include more companies across the Bitcoin ecosystem. More visibility, more opportunities surfaced. So stay tuned and sharpen your skills!

Who’s Hiring?

40 companies hired in December — down from 52. Fewer companies, fewer roles, but the ones still posting are serious.

When the market cools, you see who’s committed. These companies are still building.

Be on their radar.

Start your Bitcoin Career with Plan B Academy

Plan B Academy kicks off in February — and you can save 15% with code BITVOCATION.

Alumni have gone on to work in Bitcoin startups, education, and infrastructure.

Ready to make the jump?

Learn more and enroll here

How many Bitcoin jobs are remote?

47% remote — the highest in three months. As total volume dropped, remote share grew.

🟠 Bitcoin-only companies remain the most remote-friendly, the bigger part of their December jobs were location-independent.

Where are the hotspots of Bitcoin opportunities?

The US remains #1 with on-site jobs but the map is spreading.

Bitcoin work is no longer just US and Europe and only South America was missing from this month’s chart.

Do you have to be a Developer to work in Bitcoin?

72% of December jobs were non-dev — the pattern holds. You don’t have to be a developer to work in Bitcoin.

But here’s an interesting split: 🟠 Bitcoin-only companies leaned more toward developers this month compared to “Other” companies.

What roles have been in demand?

Senior Software Engineer tops the dev list — experience in demand. Full Stack Developer follows.

On the non-dev side: big variety, but Co-Founder, Director, and Executive Assistant stand out after Product Manager. Leadership and support roles.

Curious what specific roles are out there? Look for links below to our job feeds.

Follow our Telegram job feed or Nostr bot to stay updated and never miss a role that could be the perfect fit for you.

What Level of Talent Are Bitcoin Companies Hiring?

This is where December’s story becomes clear.

Entry-level and unpaid roles nearly vanished — from 27 jobs in November to just 4. Meanwhile, Senior positions grew from 27 to 33.

Mid-level held steady. Manager roles barely moved. But the bottom of the ladder? Almost empty.

December’s message: companies want proven talent. Build your proof of work now.

Final thoughts: The bar is rising

December confirmed what November hinted at. The market is selective. Entry-level roles nearly disappeared while senior positions grew.

This isn’t bad news — it’s a signal. Companies want proof of work. Experience. Visibility. The job seekers who spent 2025 building skills and showing up are better positioned for what’s next.

We’re preparing our full 2025 year-in-review report — trends, patterns, and insights across all 12 months. And in 2026, we’re expanding our data to cover more of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The quiet months are behind us. Time to show what you’ve built.

Interested in Integrating This Data?

Are you a founder or leader in the Bitcoin space looking to integrate job postings or company profiles into your application?

Are you someone interested in gaining deeper insights beyond the charts?

Let’s talk – we’d love to hear your needs and explore how we can help!

Let’s Connect

This report is prepared by Mindaugas and if you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn and Nostr. I am happy to connect and have conversations with fellow Bitcoiners or data lovers.

This report combines Bitvocation's data analysis with AI-assisted writing to deliver insights efficiently.

Follow Bitvocation on LinkedIn, subscribe to our Telegram channel, follow Bitvocation Bot on Nostr and subscribe here on Substack for updates.

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Plan B Network.

Their Plan ₿ Academy kicks off in February — and you can save 15% with code BITVOCATION.

It’s a 5-month, part-time program designed to help you break into the Bitcoin industry through fundamentals, expert-led sessions, hands-on projects, and direct connections with real Bitcoin companies. Ready to make the jump?

Learn more and enroll here

As the year comes to an end, I’ve been reflecting on what 2025 meant for Bitvocation — not just in terms of growth, but in how much clearer our direction has become.

Overall, I’m incredibly proud of how Bitvocation matured this year.

2025 came with three important “firsts” for us:

• our first Annual Bitcoin Job Market Report

• our first public Jobtober challenge, with more than 300 participants from all over the world

• and our first time working with sponsors

Each of these validated something we’ve believed from the beginning: that Bitcoin careers deserve their own infrastructure and strategies — not copied from or mixed up with the fiat world.

Making the Bitcoin Job Market Visible

Since we’re the only ones truly tracking Bitcoin job data, we’ve spent the year continuously improving our job feeds and monthly reports. We also published our first Annual Bitcoin Job Market Report in early 2025.

We’re proud to release the second edition in January 2026 — this time made possible with sponsor support.

2025 Wasn’t Only Wins

We realized we could build much faster with financial support, applied for a grant — and got rejected. That was disappointing, but it’s a natural part of a startup journey.

Alongside that, we also received comments like:

• “We’ve seen people like you before, and they never succeed.”

• “A female founder in Bitcoin? Good luck.”

• “You should pivot to xyz…”

Luckily, we’re not in this just for financial rewards. We love what we do and we believe it’s serving the Bitcoin community. So we’ll keep buidling with a low time preference.

Plus - every one of those very few moments of doubt and dismissal was outweighed by numerous displays of incredible support by the Bitcoin community — including our POW Lab and BTX members — and especially by the messages we started receiving this year saying:

“I found my job through Bitvocation.”

Those matter most.

Our POW Lab Evolved

Thanks to both the team and members who stepped up and started contributing, the POW Lab is turning into a true education and collaboration space. What started as a simple Telegram group has evolved into a resource dashboard on our website, including a mini circular economy. And we’re starting to split it into POW Lab Pro and POW Lab Lite.

A few maturity signals stood out:

• We’re now about halfway to 100 POW Lab members

• The first members started renewing — some even committed to 18-month memberships, which is a huge validation signal.

• Others, who found jobs or no longer need ongoing guidance, chose to downgrade to POW Lab Lite or stayed involved by supporting newer members.

• Through our BTX programme, we’re currently also working with five POW Lab members who are actively helping us build tools and services we can’t wait to launch next year.

That’s exactly the behavior we hoped for: people moving through the ecosystem as their needs change, rather than dropping out.

As a result of this maturation:

• the early adopter price of 88,888 sats for POW Lab Pro is ending in a few days

• as of January 3, it will be priced at 111,111 sats

• in the future, we’ll likely cap POW Lab Pro at around 100 members to ensure a high-quality group experience

Because of that cap, the POW Lab Lite becomes even more important. It doesn’t come with access to the Telegram group, but offers these essential visibility & findability benefits:

• a better UI for our job feed

• a place in our talent pool — not a dusty CV database, but a living profile you can update as your skills and proof of work evolve

• the chance to be recommended to startups when we’re asked for candidate referrals

Bitvocation Becomes a Circular Bitcoin Economy

One final shift in thinking this year: we’ve started to see Bitvocation not just as a resource platform, but as a digital Circular Bitcoin Economy.

We’re one of the rare businesses that use bitcoin not only as a medium of exchange, but also as a unit of account.

Our intention is simple: no waste of sats, and no waste of talent.
We don’t want to lose either to the fiat world — but instead keep both circulating and compounding inside the Bitcoin ecosystem.

An Invitation to Reflect

Thank you for being part of our journey this year!

If you’d like a simple framework to do your own reflection, have a look at our updated Permissionless Career Guide.

It’ll help you to look at where you are, what you’ve built, and what kind of signal you want to put out into the network next.

Wishing you a strong finish to the year 🧡

Let’s buidl your career together!

— Anja

We’re living through a strange moment in history.

People are worried about losing their jobs to AI — or worse, never being hired again.
They’re scared of losing their income.
The Bitcoiners among them are also terrified of being pushed into a future where universal basic income becomes the default survival mechanism.

They’re scared that in a world of rising AI, automation, and corporate cost-cutting, their work won’t be valued anymore.
They’re scared of becoming replaceable.

And honestly? Fair enough. A lot of jobs will be automated away.

But here’s the real truth:

The only thing that survives the AI wave is value.

Value you create.
Value you share.
Value you add to people and to the world.

We’re living in the Age of Value — and Bitcoiners are already ahead of everyone else.

Bitcoiners Are Literally in the Business of Value

Bitcoiners obsess over value — what it is, how it’s created, how it’s stored, how it moves.

We understand that value is subjective, contextual, and emergent.
We understand that money is information — and that Bitcoin is the most reliable way to carry value forward through time.

That’s why Bitcoiners are so mission-aligned, so principled, so focused.

Bitcoin is programmed value.

And being part of this industry inevitably forces you to reevaluate your own:

• What am I good at?

• What value can I offer?

• Who actually values what I do?

• How can I contribute to something bigger than myself?

Most people never ask these questions.

Bitcoiners do.

So What Is Value, Really?

Here’s the hard part:

Value is in the eye of the beholder.

You can be brilliant at what you do — but if the people around you don’t value it, it won’t get you anywhere.
You won’t get hired.
You won’t get paid.
You won’t get opportunities.

So you have two options:

1. Find people who do value what you offer.

Expand your network.
Put your work in front of people who get it.
Reach those who recognize what you bring to the table.

That’s the kind of stuff we focus on in the POW Lab. 👇

What if the jobs and clients found YOU instead of you having to chase them?

In our POW Lab, we help you get connected and gain the confidence to become more visible, show your proof of work, and build your reputation in the Bitcoin ecosystem - all in service of becoming FINDABLE by recruiters or potential clients.

Join us before the end of the year to secure the early adopter price!

2. Adjust what you offer to what people already value.

Retrain.
Pivot.
Learn and practice a new skill that’s in demand right now.

Plan B Networks’ Academy is the perfect place to do exactly that, and to work on real-world use cases for Bitcoin startups! 👇

Become a trained Bitcoin Professional with Plan B Academy from February 2026!

The Plan ₿ Program is a 5-month, part-time program designed for people looking to enter the Bitcoin industry. Built around how the industry actually works, it combines Bitcoin fundamentals with expert-led masterclasses, hands-on projects, and direct exposure to companies and builders in the space.

Alumni have gone on to work in Bitcoin startups, education, and infrastructure.

Start your professional transition into Bitcoin — learn more here - and get 15% off with discount code BITVOCATION.

Both options are valid.
Both are powerful.
Both keep you in control — instead of waiting for HR, recruiters, or algorithms to validate your existence.

Visibility and Community Matters

Bitcoin is not an exclusive club.
It’s one of the most open and supportive communities you’ll ever find.

All you need is the courage to claim your place in it.

The time is now.

Enjoy your Sunday! 🧡

PS: Big Thank You to our sponsoring partner Plan B Network! ⚡️

Here we go - the first Bitcoin conferences of the new year - all in sunny places!

We are in the process of updating our complete overview of Bitcoin conferences around the world, and we have lots more discounts coming from January 1st. So bookmark our Airtable, and always check it before you buy your tickets! 👇 (The list will probably triple in size shortly!)

Show me all details & ticket discounts!

What’s happening inside the POW Lab 👀

The POW Lab isn’t just run by us anymore — it’s increasingly shaped by the members themselves.

Take Miguel, for example, a POW Lab member, who offered a few weeks ago to start hosting virtual meetups every other Monday. Fast forward just 2 months, and these calls have already evolved into something bigger — with guest speakers joining and real momentum building.

📆 Tomorrow, Monday, December 15 (17:00 UTC), we’re welcoming a guest who already works at a well-known Bitcoin company and will share practical advice for Bitcoin job seekers.
His company is currently hiring, so this is a great opportunity for our members to make a genuine connection and ask the right questions.

And that’s not all.

📆 On Thursday, December 18, we’re hosting a very different kind of session — focused not on tactics, but on mindset.

“The Void Shift” — a POW Lab guest workshop 🧠

If you’ve been sending applications into the abyss and wondering whether your breakthrough is still coming… this one’s for you.

This exclusive live workshop is led by Alice, a hypnotherapist, and it’s designed to help you navigate rejection and uncertainty during a career transition without losing confidence or momentum.

In this 60-minute live session, you’ll learn how to:

✨ Identify the real blocks holding you back
✨ Activate strengths you didn’t realize you had
✨ Handle rejection and uncertainty with more ease
✨ Build resilience most people never develop during transitions
✨ Leave with a clear next step toward the opportunities meant for you

🗓 December 18, 13:00 UTC
🎟 Included in the POW Lab membership

The POW Lab is currently still available at the early-adopter price of 88,888 sats for 6 months (this goes up in January).
If you join now, you can still catch both of these online events, and you’ll lock in that price for future renewals.

Learn more about the POW Lab here

Enjoy your Sunday!

Thanks for being part of the Bitvocation community 🧡