While Most Crypto Exchanges Lay Off, Binance and FTX Announce New Jobs

While other crypto exchanges are laying off staff, the largest in the world is reportedly on a hiring spree.

According to Fortune magazine, Binance is making the most of the 'crypto winter'. CEO Changpeng Zhao stated that the exchange is currently increasing hiring.

– If we are in a crypto winter, we will take advantage of it, we will maximize it – said CZ at the Consensus 2022 conference in Austin last week.

Binance co-founder Yi He told Fortune that there are currently 2,000 job openings for engineers, product roles, marketing, and business development.

She added that the crypto space is still in its early stages, and that it is a great time to bring in top talent.

Other crypto exchanges and large companies in the crypto industry are reducing their workforce as the price and trading volume of nearly every cryptocurrency are declining.

Coinbase, Gemini, and Crypto.com have announced workforce reductions, while the crypto lending platform BlockFi announced it is letting go of about 20 percent of its staff. Several large Latin American exchanges, including Bitso and Mercado Bitcoin, have also announced cuts.

Crypto companies have justified layoffs by citing an impending possible recession that is hurting the price of everything from stocks on Wall Street to Ethereum on decentralized exchanges.

Coinbase

The leading American crypto exchange is reducing its workforce by 18 percent in preparation for the possibility of a 'prolonged' crypto winter.

In a blog post by CEO Brian Armstrong, the company revealed it will lay off 1,100 employees, noting that economic conditions are changing rapidly and that the world seems to be entering a recession. This, Armstrong said, could lead to another crypto winter that could last a long time.

Citing the need to plan for the worst, Armstrong stated that the company grew too quickly during the early bull market.

– It is now clear to me that we have too many employees – he wrote.

Coinbase stated that its largest source of revenue, trading fees, has significantly declined during previous market downturns. In its first-quarter earnings report, Coinbase reported $1.17 billion in revenue, a 35 percent drop from the same quarter a year earlier. A net loss of $429 million was also recorded.

Coinbase expects to have about 5,000 employees on its books by the end of June, according to a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company expects that the decision will cost between $40 and $45 million, including employee severance and other termination-related costs, but the estimate does not include stock-based compensation that some employees may receive.

Gemini

Gemini Trust Co. is laying off 10 percent of its staff in an effort to weather the crypto winter, announced billionaire brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss last Thursday.

The brothers reiterated their belief that the crypto revolution is ongoing, but said that the current trajectory has forced them to reassess the size of their workforce.

– We have asked team leaders to ensure that they are focused only on products that are critical to our mission and to assess whether their teams are appropriately sized for the current turbulent market conditions that are likely to last for some time. After much thought and consideration, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to part ways with approximately 10 percent of our workforce – they wrote.

All physical offices of the company are closed, and laid-off employees will have one-on-one meetings with their managers to discuss severance, the brothers wrote in a letter.

Crypto.com

Crypto.com will lay off 260 people, or 5 percent of its corporate workforce, as markets continue to decline, CEO Kris Marszalek said in a tweet on Saturday.

Through Twitter, Marszalek described the layoffs as a difficult and necessary decision to ensure long-term sustainability and growth. The CEO also reflected on the current market downturn, alluding to the bear market of 2018 and the company's focus on building during the crypto winter of '18-'19.

– We will continue to evaluate how best to optimize our resources to position ourselves as the strongest builders during the bear cycle, to become the biggest winners during the next bull market – wrote Marszalek.

BlockFi

The crypto lending company BlockFi announced two days ago that it is reducing its staff by 20 percent, making it the fourth company in a row in the crypto industry to lay off employees amid a brutal downturn.

From BlockFi, which offers its customers high-yield crypto accounts, they stated that the company has been affected by a dramatic shift in macroeconomic conditions worldwide, likely referring to fears of a possible recession that is severely impacting markets almost everywhere around the globe.

At the time of writing this article, bitcoin was trading at just over $20,000, a drop of 70 percent from its peak of $69,000. Many observers and analysts suggest that bitcoin and other crypto assets still have room to fall before finding a bottom.

Binance is not the only crypto company that will be hiring more, not less, during the bear market. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said last week on Twitter that the exchange will 'keep pushing forward' while continuing to hire. Ryan Watt, CEO of Polygon Studios, also tweeted yesterday that his company plans to increase its workforce by 15 percent this year.