In the event that Sandy Carter left her job as vice-president for Amazon’s cloud computing division In an LinkedIn post that she would be joining an crypto technology firm. The post also included a link to open positions in the company.

In just two days stated that more than 350 individuals — including many from the largest Internet companies — followed the link to sign up for the company, Unstoppable Domains. The company sells domain addresses that reside in the Blockchain, which is the distributed ledger that powers cryptocurrency.

“It’s the perfect storm,” Carter declared. “The momentum we’re seeing in this space is just incredible.”

Carter is one of the many in an increasing number of engineers and executives leaving the comforts of Google, Amazon, Apple and other major tech companies that offer millions of dollars annually in compensation — to pursue what they believe is an opportunity that will only come around once in a lifetime. The next thing that’s big is crypto according to them”cash-in-hand” which includes digital currencies like bitcoin as well as products such as non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs, which are based on blockchain technology.

Silicon Valley is now awash with tales of people who have taken almost unbelievable crypto investments like Dogecoin which is a digital currency inspired by a dog’s meme that can lead to life-changing riches. Bitcoin has seen a rise of 60% this year, and Ether is the cryptocurrency that is linked to Ethereum blockchain has risen by more than fivefold.

Beyond that hype about speculative speculation, a growing section of the tech industry’s brightest and brightest anticipates a revolutionary event that occurs every couple of decades, which rewards the people who can spot the shift in the technology before all the other people. With crypto they are able to find historical parallels with how the personal computer and Internet were once viewed as a joke, but only to change the status quo and create billionaires of a new generation.

Investors have also come into. They’ve poured over $28 billion into crypto and blockchain startups this year, which is four times more than the amount in 2020, as per PitchBook which analyzes private investments. Over $3 billion has been poured into NFT companies in the last year alone.

“There is a giant sucking sound coming from crypto,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO, the search engine startup Neeva and an ex- Google executive who is competing with crypto companies to recruit expertise. “It is a little similar to the 1990s and the advent of the Internet and the Internet all over again. It’s still early, chaotic and so filled with opportunities.”

Crypto that has been rebranded to be less threatening web3 could be similar to past speculation bubbles such as subprime mortgages, or the tulip fever of the late 17th century critics declared. The excitement, they claimed was motivated by the desire to make money quickly through trading in an investment class that was often to be based upon Internet jokes.

But the growing number of people who believe in crypto could revolutionize the world by establishing an uncentralized Internet that isn’t solely controlled by a few corporations. While these possibilities have been in existence since Bitcoin began to emerge in 2009 crypto products like NFTs have only entered the mainstream in 2011. This has increased the rate of departure of Big Tech companies into the crypto world.

Brian Roberts, chief financial chief executive of Lyft was fired from the ride-hailing firm to join OpenSea the most well-known crypto startup. “I’ve seen enough cycles and paradigm shifts to be cognizant when something this big is just emerging,” Roberts wrote via email. “We are Day One in terms of NFTs and their impact.”

The lure of crypto has proved so attractive that the largest tech firms are attempting to keep employees. At Google worries about maintaining employees — including making sure they don’t lose them to crypto businesses — became so urgent that the matter was a part of the agenda of executive meetings on a weekly basis by Sundar Pichai, the company’s CEO, as well as his top deputies, according to two persons with access to the discussion said.

Google also began offering stock awards to employees working in areas of the company that could be ripe for poaching they said. Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Contrary to Meta that has taken on crypto, Google has been cautious about joining the cryptocurrency movement. However, Google employees witnessed the potential of crypto in the first instance in the case of Surojit Chatterjee, a vice-president who left the company in the last year to become chief product officer for Coinbase one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges.

After Coinbase became public on April 1, Chatterjee’s shares Coinbase grew to over 600 million dollars. He had been working there for only 14 months.

The huge amounts of crypto wealth have created fear of not being able to participate or Fomo among techies, particularly those whose buddies bought Bitcoin in the past and are now incredibly wealthy.

“Back in 2017 or so, people were mostly in it for the investment opportunity,” said Evan Cheng, co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs, a start-up that focuses on the development of Blockchain infrastructure. “Now it’s people actually wanting to build stuff.”