Last week, a controversy erupted between Binance France and a professional training startup due to the mix of genres between education and marketing.
Lack of outlets, blurred line between marketing and pedagogy: the controversy surrounding the partnership between the cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance and a French training center calls into question the future of courses in the blockchain sector. This technology, which is similar to an untouchable ledger that allows authentication of online transactions, also serves as a support for NFTs, for example.
The affair began with an article in the British newspaper Financial Times, which pointed to the possible abuse of this partnership between the philanthropic arm of Binance and the Simplon school. In particular, he mentioned the need for students to create an account on the platform in order to follow the training, while French regulations prohibit any commercial access.
“No marketing push”
Binance and Simplon responded in a press release sent to AFP by denouncing “factual errors,” and Binance France president David Prinçay confirmed that the partnership had led to “absolutely no marketing shift.” However, this article highlighted the difficulties with this agreement. What was supposed to result in the training of 10,000 people fell short of its target, with 5,272 students taking the course. Simplon has also decided to no longer offer training in this area.
“There are no massive job offers in these professions. Our goal is to achieve professional integration,” its director Frédéric Bardeau explains to AFP. “We said to ourselves that there are jobs for the unemployed that we are training, and in fact there are very few. There are mainly people who are already developers and want to train in blockchain.”
Its finding contradicts recommendations made in April 2021 in a report presented to the ministries of economy and higher education, which called for a “rapid increase in the number of master’s training courses” in line with the launched “national blockchain strategy”. in 2019 by the government.
At the time, their number was 29, compared to 15 in the rest of Europe, which already demonstrates France’s desire to establish itself as a bastion of this technology on the continent. The office of the minister responsible for digital affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, did not respond to requests for comment.
Legal setbacks
In any case, the outlook no longer looks so bright. Where engineering or business schools have integrated blockchain into their offerings, the technology’s share remains minimal and is part of a swarm of other innovations.
Grégoire Genest, co-founder of the Albert School, a digital business school, confirms that “blockchain” is only “marginally” taught in his graduate training. If he mentions “very interesting technology”, he insists on its limited aspect compared to other advances such as artificial intelligence, described as a “technological breakthrough”.
The president of the Albert School sees in students’ interest in “blockchain” the effects of “communication operations in the world of cryptocurrencies” and praises the field presented as lucrative. However, if the value of bitcoin has increased in recent months after a sharp decline, the state of the labor market is less upbeat: Binance laid off 1,000 people in the United States during the summer, and the French start-up specialized in cryptocurrencies, Ledger, announced in early October that it would split with 12% of its workforce.
The legal setbacks of the platforms, such as the bankruptcy of FTX or the resignation of the head of Binance, who pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws, have also tarnished the sector and subsequently reduced the appeal of blockchain training.
According to MEP Aurore Lalucq (Place Publique), who is at the forefront of these issues, only better regulation by the authorities can improve the image of the sector among the public and experts: “There is a need to have regulations,” she insists.