Before the year ends, I want to share this
What we built, what didn’t work — and what’s coming next
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?
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
You and the team have done amazing work Anja! This is a much needed project and community that focuses directly on Bitcoin industry, not tech, not fintech, NOT crypto. Maybe yes others have attempted, but others are not you and Bitvocation has positioned itself with a number of unique core offerings that have never existed inside the Bitcoin ecosystem previously.
Reading some of the comments you received whilst fund raising are disgusting, and sounds like many in Bitcoin are just Fiat maxis posing as friends.
I hope Bitvocation continues on to become the premier spot for people bringing their skills and knowledge to companies here and companies utilising Bitcoin as we move into the future.
Amazing work, and the ‘setbacks’ are just lessons in the learning curve and process. To the future! 🥂💪🏾
The framing of Bitcoin as both medium of exchange and unit of account is where most projects fail to commit fully. Using sats as the pricing unit creates real skin in the game rather than just accepting BTC payments at fiat-pegged rates. The "no waste of sats, no waste of talent" principle mirrors circular economy thinking but applied to human capital flows instead of materials. I've wathed too many Bitcoin businesses treat sats as a payment rail while still pricing everything in dollars mentally.