It really would be, and we need to fight that. It's definitely a trend I've been seeing and it worries me.
Do a search on Upwork for Rust gigs. Almost all crypto.
LinkedIn jobs, very similar. Putting "Rust" in my profile there has also led to a lot of recruiters pinging me about web3-ish jobs that I have no interest in.
The Rust PL group I'm on, also on LinkedIn, has a steady stream of 'smart contract' etc discussions. And people advertising themselves for crypto jobs. Or crypto jobs advertising looking for people.
That's not to say there isn't plenty of other Rust stuff out there, but it seems like this is where a lot of the use is right now and I really hope the language as a whole doesn't get typecast this way.
I got the same impression looking for Go a few years ago. I guess in a world without legacy code because it's too new for legacy code, you're going to use the newest programming languages. That was also the kind of startup that was getting funded back then. I haven't paid much attention but maybe the hype has died down over the last few months.
My overall thought is that programming language popularity is a lagging indicator; people might be hiring Java engineers even if they wish they didn't write their codebase in Java. Changing that is risky; getting one more employee can stop the bleeding. Meanwhile newly-formed companies use the newest tools, and thus among newly-formed companies, you're going to see many more requests for engineers with experience with the newer tools. (It's one of those secret advantages for startups; your competitor might be slowed down by all the legacy and thus resources given to your new startup might get more value than if given to the incumbent.)
