I woke up today to see news on a particular crypto exam. I was impressed, good on Malta for organizing the first ever exam on cryptocurrency, I thought. Upon further reading, I realized that it was less of an exam and more of a certification. I believe in the crypto world that we live in today, it is extremely important to have certification to have some form of uniformity. At the very least, the people who are dealing with cryptocurrency know what they are talking about instead of having someone tell you how cryptocurrency mining is like 'printing money'.
I was of course impressed until I realized that more than half the participants failed it.
Some Context
The certification exam conducted by Malta for the purpose of certifying any agents who intend to deal with initial coin offerings (ICOs) in Malta. These agents can be of any profession ranging from lawyers to accountants. This examination and a training course were conducted in line with Malta's Virtual Financial Assets Acts.
The results were astounding, with as many as 60% of those who took part in the exam, failing it. This was even after the authorities relaxed the marking criteria of the exam. From this, I can think of two possibilities. The first is, of course, the manner in which the exam was conducted.
The Exam Was Not Reliable
There are many ways in which an exam can be rendered unreliable. First off, we know that the exam was conducted with multiple choice questions. However, we have no idea how the questions were written. As a lecturer who has taught on assessment in college, I dislike multiple choice questions. This is because they are extremely difficult to set.
A great multiple choice question consists of a correct answer, a wrong answer, and two distractors. These choices are so close to the correct answer that they are meant to 'distract' the student from the right answer. Of course, if you studied well, the distractors won't do any good. However, what if the questions were subjective?
I remember seeing a particular paper on civic duty. The question was about if we should give money to beggars on the street. A student replied, no. Of course, the correct answer to that was yes, we should give money to beggars. However, this student replied that we should give food instead as money could be misused to buy drugs. Obviously, the student is not wrong, but that is a classic example of an ambiguous question.
Another possibility is that the content taught during the training course was not relevant to the exam. This happens often when the training session is used to talk about a particular content and the exam is based on something completely different. This would cause most of the students to fail as they have not adequately prepared for it. There are, of course, many other reasons to why the exam is flawed, but what if the students are just not qualified?
What If The Exam Was Right?
What if the blockchain certification test did what it was supposed to do and weeded out the students who were not qualified? This would be rather sad as it indicates that most are not aware of cryptocurrencies, blockchain or how it works. This paints a rather grim picture of many 'agents' who are running around with no idea what they are doing. While this is seen through a test in Malta, this is obvious in some parts of the world.
They are many blockchain experts who are running around with no qualifications whatsoever. While some of them know what they are talking about and know it well, some don't. What this means for the rest of us getting into cryptocurrency is this, there is a need for us to be educated in order for us to not be scammed in any way.
In terms of the blockchain certification exam, I think its great to have such certifications to ensure that all agents and that dealnig with cryptocurrency are qualified to do so. Hopefully one day, they will be able to come up with one that is used by all countries.