Is Crypto Hiring Cooked for 2026? | Dan Eskow - Up Top

The next talk is is crypto hiring cooked? And if my crypto Twitter account is to be believed, the only place you can get hired in crypto is in New York. And I hope that Dan will debunk that for us.

GM GM GM. What's up? Hey. Good? Yeah.

Cool. Hey guys. Um great to be back here at ETHDenver. This is my third time up here speaking. For anyone who doesn't know me, my name is Dan.

I'm the founder of Uptop. Uh we're the OGs in crypto recruiting. Been around for about 5 years, and uh and man, the game has changed, and we're watching it we're watching the evolution right before our eyes, and I'm here to talk about how that's affecting hiring in 2026. So, yes, the question is, are we cooked? Is hiring cooked?

What's the deal? Um we're going to get into all the details, but I'm going to start with a preface by saying I don't [ __ ] know. It's a It's a really, really confusing moment. As someone who's watched all the trends and and been in the trenches, it is a confusing moment in hiring in crypto, and we'll talk a little bit about why that is. So, are we cooked?

On the outside, the answer would appear to be definitely, absolutely yes. Um obviously, hiring is pretty has always been pretty correlated to price action, and the price action right now is not looking good. Um and it seems like we're going to we got a little uh we we got a little ways to go before we hit the floor. So, not looking super optimistic there. Um the the sheer volume of job postings uh is way down since last year, so that's not a great signal either.

And of course, what's been dominating your timelines and your news feeds lately is definitely the layoffs from like tier-1 big companies that you would think uh should be, you know, the the stable ones in the industry, right? We're talking Uniswap, we're talking about Magic Eden, OKX, and some of these other institutional shops that you're like, "Hey, now is the time when you're supposed to be winning. Why are we laying people off, right?" So, uh but I I think the most important number to look at on this slide is the the fear index. So, uh I don't think it'll be any a surprise to anyone in the audience that people are kind of a little bit freaked out in this moment.

Um when we think about FTX, which was the last time the fear index was this low, um you start to think that a lot of the mistakes that were made at that time were mistakes that we made as an industry that were controllable mistakes, and you could look back and say, "We did this, this, and that wrong." But right now, these are macro factors, macroeconomic factors that we just have no control over, and you know, that makes people feel a little bit uh helpless, and that's scary. That being said, uh when the fear index is this low is always the best time to hire uh the more senior and and uh experienced people. Um reason being like, you know, they just don't know what the future of their of their company is. Yeah, I just saw Uniswap laid off 25% of the company.

Like, I don't know if I don't know where this thing is going, and I got to get ahead of it. So, um there's less competition in the market, job posting's low, so there's less There's less competition, but there's uh high volume of of quality candidates in the market, so good time depending on which side of the fence you sit. So, that being said, there are some positive numbers that maybe like people aren't seeing in the in the Twitter feeds. For us personally, hence why I started this talk off by saying like, "I'm confused." Like, our interview volume is up three and a half X almost.

Uh Uh, our our salary trend is is going up. And uh and obviously that means our our fee and our business is doing really well. So, yeah, it's it's a little bit scary. So, what I'm about to say is a little bit kind of speculative, but I'm going to give you my best opinion my best guess as to why this is. Um the layoffs we mentioned in the last slide, right?

What's interesting if you like look one step one level deeper is like most of these layoffs aren't because the business is failing. These are not layoffs that are attributed to like we just need to cut costs and cut overheads so we can keep the lights on and work with what we got with the lean team. No, these are strategic pivots, right? And these layoffs often come on the backs of acquisitions. So, Polygon, you know, for example making the pivot to becoming like this payment chain, they made a couple of acquisitions of smaller companies.

I can't remember the name right now in that payment space. So, with that acquisitions comes acqui-hires and then you're laying people off who like it's not because they failed at their job or they or they weren't quality, you know, employees. These are good people that are just kind of a victim of the situation here and landed on the wrong side of the pivot, hence why there's good candidates like getting laid off in the market and that's why they're getting picked up by uh by the few companies that are hiring. And uh the interesting thing also on that is like these few companies are, you know, we're in the we're in the cycle of enterprise crypto, corporate crypto, like that's a thing right now. So, for example, like we have in this in this moment today we have over 100 people interviewing right now.

Uh which is a lot for us. That is a lot. Uh around this time last year we had probably like in the low 40s, like 42 people interviewing at one time. Now we got 100 and uh we just had Optimism up here. Optimism's a client of mine.

Tough day for them, but uh of those 100 people, 26 of them are at Optimism. So, what does that tell you? Like, okay, yeah, maybe there's not a ton of early stage pre-seed companies that are just scraping up the market, but there's a few big enterprise players and I don't know, to me that's a good signal. Let's talk about candidate motion. Like what do candidates want?

What are what are they interested in? What are they not interested in? Uh quick little like interesting anecdote, I'm probably not a super shock to anyone here watching this talk, but I had a candidate ask me the other day, he's like, you know, he's asking me for opportunities, I'm pitching him some projects and he's saying, you know, do they have do they have a token? Is there a plan for a token launch? If yes, not interested.

Right? So that's a kind of a like a I see that as a positive shift, but it's definitely an interesting one. Um the believe in something era is over. No one's uh believing in generational wealth from a token, you know, from one job. It's just not going to happen anymore and so um proof over promises, stability over moonshots.

People are actually thinking about being more responsible in building their own careers. So, you know, it doesn't age well on a resume if your only job was to inflate a token. That doesn't age well. Um building a business and you know, having like credible metrics to talk about around what you did to build a real, you know, revenue-generating business, that looks good on a resume and that's what people are looking for. Um this is that's just that's just where we're at and uh I'm not mad at it at all.

Um with that, let's just quickly mention some of the skill sets that are hot and some that are not. I think if you're just looking uh at the slide behind us, I think the most obvious thing is, you know, thank god we don't have any the the the era of alt L1s and rollups and all that stuff is is is super dead. So you have less of a a demand for ecosystem leads and partnership managers and community managers and discord people and random growth people like that right now like what's in demand is they want like SAS sales people, like corporate trained people who know how to behave in a corporate culture, and and we're not focusing on the crypto echo chamber bubble. We're looking outside and we're we're we're targeting real companies, and we have to present as people that know how to manage those relationships, right? Um so, this should make a lot of sense uh given everything I've said so far.

So, yeah. Uh no more like BD isn't just coming to the event and waiting at the end of the buffet and you know, kicking it to whoever's at the party. No, this is like can you run a process? Can you manage a CRM? Like, do you schedule the follow-ups properly and all that kind of stuff?

Like, classically trained employees of a company. Uh little interesting dynamic is this uh I'm calling it the AI reverse card. So, uh quick anecdote that I thought was super interesting and worth sharing here. Good friend of mine runs platform for a tier one venture fund in the space. She told me she actually spoke up here on the stage a few minutes ago.

She told me that she's speaking to an AI engineering recruiting firm, right? This is by far the hottest skill set in the market that is high in demand right now. AI engineering recruiting firm, right? This recruiting firm told her he wouldn't take a call with the company, the AI company, unless they've raised a minimum of 15 million. If you haven't raised 15 million and you're building an AI company, don't talk to me.

That's what a recruiting company is saying. When I When she told me that, I was like, that makes perfect [ __ ] sense. You know why? Because you can't compete. It like the the caliber of engineer you need to hire to compete with Anthropic or OpenAI or whatever is so expensive, and it's not even about the price.

It's like it's just hard to compete with the big boys. And so, I think uh that's among that's among a few reasons why people are coming back from AI. And it's I'm not going to It's not like a a huge wave, but this is definitely a trend to be paying attention to. Yeah, I think I think people there there are some pros here. Yeah, I'll let you read the slide yourself, but but yeah, there's a there's a there's a legit sell against AI hiring right now.

So, I think if you're a founder in crypto looking to compete with for talent in that area, you can't act like it's not there. You have to specifically pitch against AI. And on this slide, there's a couple of uh helpful pointers that I think would be good. Um I just saw a Frank Chaparro tweet out this morning that Morgan Stanley's hiring like 26 roles at Morgan Stanley for their crypto team. So, it's nice to see the institutions leaning into the crash.

Um and it's and it's nice to see institutions are like they see value in crypto-native candidates going over to that side of the field. So, yeah, that's nice to see. Uh as our friend alluded to earlier, there's definitely New York City versus everyone out there. Um as a New Yorker, like this should be a point of pride, but it's as a recruiter, it's not. It's really not.

Uh it's extremely competitive in New York. And And kind of similar to the AI reverse card situation, like if you're not a super prominent tier A1 project, you're just going to really really struggle to hire uh in person in New York. Candidates just have way too many options. And it's you know, price is a factor. Like I just as a general rule, I would say you're not going to be able to hire for under 200K anyone in New York, period.

Um but even at a inflated base salary, a lot of it comes down to lifestyle. Um quick funny anecdote, I have a pre-seed crypto startup in New York that's telling my candidates quickly I fired them after I realized this, but they're telling my candidates, "This job is 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

7 days a week in the office in New York." My man, you are never It is that is never going to happen and like it's over. Um and a even more interesting data point that I think is uh another one of my clients who is a really prominent crypto project now, a lot of emotion, doing really well. Their entire pipeline of hiring in December was four people because they're so strict on only hiring in New York. So, obviously, they weren't able to hire any of those four people, but I mean, this is a company that you would think would have a pipeline of probably 30 to 50 people at any given time.

They had four. That's how competitive hiring is in New York right now. Uh Let's see. Yeah, I just think um and this is kind of I think I kind of touched on some of this stuff already, but if your pre-seed gets scrappy, that's that's your only hope. Um People with the, you know, the bells and whistles on the resume, like they it should like like I said, they're not believing in the dream and uh it's just going to be a hard sell.

So, you're going to want to hire people for You're going to have to figure out how to screen for actual talent rather than experience and resume and that's something that I would say 70% of founders get wrong. Screening for talent rather than resume sounds easy. It's It's It's It's a often a a big miss. And so, that's what I think and last thing I'll point I'll make on that is when I think of like what is scrappy mean? Like what's a scrappy What's a scrappy way to hire people?

At the end of the day, it comes down to risk. You have to take a risk on someone and you have to bet on your ability to like vet them and if it doesn't work out, you have to be okay with moving on quickly. Hire quick, fire quick. To me, that says I just took a risk on you. Either it is going to work out or it's not.

I got to make a decision quickly and keep it moving. To me, that feels like a confident founder is willing to like take a bet. And [clears throat] uh as we got 2 minutes here, I'll just kind of run through this little playbook real quick. This is more for for founders, but um yeah, fish in different pools. Like don't be like everyone was going to like don't be the guy if you're a founder, don't have recruiters targeting the same people um that everyone else is targeting.

Like it's just oversaturated. Uh don't hire in New York if you unless you like absolutely need to. Be flexible. Uh I think Claude got this third point wrong. Uh AI is not perfect yet, but what I meant by rethink compensation was cash has to be like at fair market value.

Like there's no oh, we're just a pre-seed company. We want the A1 hire, but um you know, we're going to we can only afford 150 cash and huge upside. It's over. No one's going for that anymore. There was a moment where you can make that happen.

That that is that is over. Like you're only going to be able to get the candidates you can actually pay for, period, on cash with cash. Um really important number four, speed killing competition. I I started the talk by talking about the fear index and how it's an interesting time where top candidates are available right now. That's true.

That won't last forever. This is your opportunity. They will be snatched up in the next two to three months and we'll be back to where we we'll be back to right where we started. So, right now, good moment, a lot of good candidates in the market. Hire while you have the opportunity or someone else will.

Um I think this is pretty much I think I kind of covered all this stuff a little bit. So, are we cooked? No, not really. I don't think so. Uh somehow not.

I p- Uh but as I started this talk with, I'm confused a little bit. Uh we're having a moment of massive success at Upfront right now, so it's a good time to be hitting us up. I don't know where we're at in two, three months, but um I'm hoping we keep it going. And uh overall, I would say to wrap this thing up like the trend of enterprise SaaS people coming into corporate crypto companies for me um feels like a massive positive like step in in a professional direction where you need to be going. So, I'm sure we'll make it through a the next couple months and hopefully we end up on the other side with some real businesses with real people making real money.

So, uh cheers. Thanks for having me guys. Have a good rest of your day.