International financial institution HSBC is looking for marketing interns to join their team this summer. So it’s no surprise they are taking to employment testing websites like GapJumpers to try and identify who the best candidate for the role is.

Identified by Reddit user ‘yakka2’, HSBC is asking potential marketing intern candidates to outline bitcoin benefits as they apply to the HSBC business model in the form of a position paper.

Here’s the full text from the prompt (found here).

HSBC is one of the leading international banks. Technology plays a big part of the banking world nowadays. The advent of mobile devices, bitcoin, crypto currency, access to internet, are change everyday banking.

Create a position paper on the benefits of Bitcoin being adopted and being a part of HSBC consumer products. Pick a position in favour or against and please add your sources.

Of course, such a prompt wouldn’t be quite interesting if it was coming from a company working in the crypto-currency sector. But HSBC does far from that.

Which leads us to ask, are they simply looking to give the brains of potential interns a workout, or is the company genuinely interested in exploring bitcoin-related products and services?

Assuming they are, they wouldn’t be the first. Today’s financial institutions recognize that bitcoin is here to stay, and are working to add team members with digital currency know-how.

Just ask Estonian Bank LHV, who recently announced the hire of a “virtual currency expert” who will use his expertise to help the bank develop products and services built atop bitcoin.

It’s just one example, and we’re sure to see a lot more of this in the months ahead. What do you make of it?