What Cryptocurrencies Are Hired To Do

Let’s glean from the news the jobs which cryptocurrencies are hired to perform, and what’s getting fired in the process. I’ve never bought cryptocurrencies, but let’s give it a shot anyway.

Hired? Fired?

Quick Primer on the Jobs-To-Be-Done Theory: A product (or service or idea or concept) isn’t so much purchased as it is hired. You can hire a product, you can hire a concept, you can hire an idea.

The hiring event is a moment in time where the purchaser or the person choosing that product/service/idea/concept decides to take the plunge, thereby committing to the purchase and, at the same time, saying no to something else. When someone hires a product, something else is fired.

There was a job to get done, the usual stuff no longer did that job, a new thing comes in and promises to do that job really well, and the old thing gets fired. “So long, I’m going with this new thing from this point on”.

Job #1: I’ve gotten a sense that my career as a technical/financial/legal professional has a new fragility now that I’ve been hearing about the rise of cryptocurrency. So I buy some cryptocurrency so I can get into that game.

This first one is about getting into the cryptocurrency game. In this scenario, cryptocurrency’s value is found in the career potential found in being able to understand the rules of the game, the intricacies of the software, the variables of the formula.

What gets hired?
The cryptocurrency ecosystem

What gets fired?
Other potential career avenues or areas of interests.

This is one story of how cryptocurrency is being used for illicit commerce.

What gets hired?
An undercover means to accumulate wealth or influence

What gets fired?
Bartering, laundered or legitimate fiat currency

Job #3: The thing I want is rare. According to the seller, the straight-forward way to pay for that thing is through a cryptocurrency, and the price is right.

This story is one of expediency. There are costs to the cryptocurrency conversion, but because I want in on the deal before someone else does, I’ll do what needs to get done.

What gets hired?
A transaction mechanism that guarantees acquiring the good I want.

What gets fired?
Waiting for another chance to get that good, contacting the seller to propose different ways to purchase the good.

Job #4: When I see that the federal reserve is losing some financial levers to influence the economy, I start considering cryptocurrencies so I can safeguard my investments.

While this isn’t a straight up purchase of cryptocurrency, the person buys into the idea of cryptocurrency as an alternative economic engine to the centralized banking systems.

What gets hired?
The idea of a new emerging economic engine to bet on for stabilizing markets

What gets fired?
The idea that the central banking systems are the only holder of levers to stabilize markets

Much of the news revolves around cryptocurrency’s claim to be a holder of value (like gold), which is still in dispute as the crypto markets remain volatile.

It seems, as these examples above illustrate, that cryptocurrencies seem to be hired for other jobs that are more transactional (#2 and #3) or more strategic (#1 and #4) than a pure holder of value.

Those are some solid jobs. If we can sustain the technical systems and ecological costs of cryptocurrencies, and no central banking systems is able to squash them completely, it looks like cryptocurrency will be here to stay. That is, unless something else gets hired to do those jobs better, in which case, cryptocurrency will be fired. A potential candidate would be a centralized digital credit systems like the one found in China (for jobs #1, #3 and #4).

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