With the explosive growth of the crypto space, a lot of jobs and careers have been opening up in a market that, unless you are a developer, doesn’t really have any natural entry points. In a bid to create a meaningful and recognizable certification for knowledge about crypto, Coursera has teamed up with ConsenSys to create a course in Blockchain that starts from scratch, and teaches users about the technology without requiring any coding or computer science background.
Blockchain the Hot Cake
With 5.6 billion USD raised through ICOs in 2017, and even more already raised in 2018, the crypto space is expanding rapidly. It might not look like it if you only study the market caps, but month by month, the number of people working in crypto is increasing, and there are always companies looking for new talent.
The greatest demand, naturally, is for programmers, who can build and develop the currencies themselves, but even non-developers are in short supply who are willing and able to work for crypto start ups and working groups.
The space is simply so new and growing so rapidly, that it’s difficult to find people who are knowledgeable about it. And for those who are, it is often difficult to prove it.
Enter Coursera
Coursera, an online learning platform founded in 2012 by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Kolle, are seeking to remedy that.
Together with ConsenSys, a Blockchain development company with four years’ experience in the space, they have created a course specifically for non-developers who want to know more about Blockchain and cryptocurrencies – or who want to be able to prove the knowledge they have.
The course starts from scratch and teaches students everything from the basics of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to how wallets and nodes work to use cases and potential future giants in the space.
There are universities that offer courses in the basics of Blockchain, of course, but these generally require you to already be enrolled in one of the top universities. The Coursera course, by contrast, is open to anyone with an interest in the space.
As time goes on, we can expect more and more institutions to start issuing certificates and holding courses in the technology. The market abhors a vacuum, and while there will always be job openings in crypto as long as we see the expansion we are going through now, we are now starting to see our institutions of learning gearing up to tackle the shortage of education and certification.
