- Brits think crypto trader and crypto miner aren't very socially valuable occupations.
- Crypto trader scores closer to crypto miner than stock trader.
- The study was conducted by two researchers from the University of Oxford and BI Norwegian Business School.
How valuable to society are crypto traders and miners?
Not very, according to a new study.
The study, published in the academic journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, evaluates the occupational “prestige” and “social value” of 576 job titles, based on responses from 2,429 UK-based participants.
The British public holds a rather dim view of crypto traders and miners, ranking them among the least valuable to society compared to other professions.
When it comes to what people think is socially valuable, crypto miners lag significantly with a score of just 26.55, and crypto traders aren’t much better at 27.92.
Meanwhile, escorts score closely between the two crypto occupations with a rating of 27.71.
Online pornographic content creators, like those on OnlyFans, come in at 17.13. Fitness, fashion and travel influencers score 28.24, 26.58 and 22,36, respectively.
The scores were lower than the study’s co-author Christoph Lutz expected.
“It could have to do with negative narratives and press coverage about these occupations,” Lutz, from BI Norwegian Business School, told DL News. He worked with Gemma Newlands from the University of Oxford.
Before the survey, researchers ran a test with 50 people for each job title, asking them to describe the tasks and activities of each role. The public “is not able to clearly differentiate the tasks each of the occupations does,” Lutz said.
The difference in social value and prestige between crypto traders and miners appears tiny, despite their distinct roles — one focuses on market activity and speculation, while the other ensures network security. These two crypto-related occupations are also more closely aligned with each other than crypto traders are with stock traders.
“The understandings of cryptocurrency miner are much more diffuse, and many conflated them with cryptocurrency trader,” Lutz told DL News.
There is also a lot of disagreement about the value of these two crypto jobs.
The ratings for social value have a high “standard deviation” of 26.35 for crypto traders — a measure of how much people’s opinions differ from the average.
This is one of the highest variations in the data, Lutz said. That shows that public opinion on the value of crypto traders and miners is more mixed compared to many other occupations.
“Occupations in the financial sector in our data tend to struggle with a social value deficit, so people see them as more prestigious than socially valuable,” Lutz said.
All these jobs pale in comparison to medical roles.
Doctors and nurses, for instance, respectively score 83.61 and 76.71 on the social value scale. Their prestige scores are equally stellar, with doctors at 90 and nurses at 85.
Ekin Genç is DL News’ Managing Editor based in Oxford. Got a tip? Email him at ekin@dlnews.com.