Hiring Amid Firing: Crypto Winter Doesn’t Affect These Exchanges

Key Insights:

• Some crypto firms are expanding and recruiting fresh talents amid industry-wide layoffs.
• LBank, Ripple, Binance, Polygon, and OKX, among others, have opened over 100 positions for various departments.
• Despite the crypto market’s downward trend, few crypto businesses believe that the industry could rise back.

As crypto endures a bear market, payrolls are slashed, and employees who once boasted of being a part of world-class crypto exchanges and companies are in a dire situation. Brutal economic conditions and sudden plunge in crypto prices have led to massive layoffs within the cryptocurrency space.

One after the other, blockchain companies announced trimming their workforce, citing “turbulent market conditions.” For instance, On June 14, Coinbase (COIN) went public announcing its decision to reduce the size of its team by 18% – about 1,100 full-time roles.

CEO Brian Armstrong said the firm had over-hired, especially since the beginning of 2021, when crypto prices were soaring. He cited,

“We saw the opportunities, but we needed to massively scale our team to be positioned to compete in a broad array of bets. While we tried our best to get this just right, in this case, it is now clear to me that we over-hired.”

Close to the Coinbase announcement, BlockFi declared that it would reduce its “headcount by roughly 20%” to around 600. The company blamed the negative impact of market conditions, leading to this decision.

Crypto.com, too, laid off 5% of its talent pool (260 employees roughly) to ensure “continued and sustainable growth for the long term.”

That means making difficult and necessary decisions to ensure continued and sustainable growth for the long term by making targeted reductions of approximately 260 or 5% of our corporate workforce.

— Kris | Crypto.com (@kris) June 11, 2022

Few crypto firms are on a hiring-spree

Amid the hiring hangover experienced by various leading crypto firms, many are using this opportunity to hire talents that their rivals have shed.

LBank Exchange, one of the top 20 exchanges with deep liquidity (according to CoinMarketCap data), is on a hiring spree. The exchange has posted various job openings on LinkedIn, seeking blockchain experts and interns across its global offices.

According to a press release, LBank has remained ‘unhacked’ and secured amid a slew of security breaches and hack attacks. Allen Wei, co-founder, and CEO of the firm stated,

“We believe in weathering the storm ahead of the sunny day. For us, this is a great time to bring in more talents out there who may have unfortunately lost their source of livelihood.”

Additionally, blockchain solutions provider Ripple (XRP) has shared how Ripple’s teams of engineers work to forge “new paths in the crypto industry.”

“This industry’s moving so fast and RippleX is the place that we want engineers to come and really build the future.” -Jas Takhar, head of @RippleXDev Engineering

Learn how you can help build innovative #crypto and #blockchain solutions at Ripple. https://t.co/UdzCpVX6Ru pic.twitter.com/CAEUdl1AF5

— Ripple (@Ripple) June 21, 2022

The company’s career page has opened more than 100 positions for various departments. The company posted primarily engineering roles across its branches in London, New York, and San Francisco.

Last week, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, shared that the company is looking for both hybrid and remote roles.

Ripple is hiring for hundreds of roles around the globe – both in person and remote. Fair warning – we have a “no assholes” policy here. If that’s the kind of culture you’re looking for, apply here https://t.co/49kPgUOMpR https://t.co/IZl4wskYFp

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) June 16, 2022

Dubbed “The Ripple Effect x Toronto Engineering,” the company will start recruiting in Toronto on Thursday (June 23). The hiring drive seeks to recruit experts from cloud operations engineers to technical writers.

Another crypto trading platform OKX remarked that it would “continue to hire top talent”. The company will hire 1,500 new employees globally within 2023.

#OKX is committed to diversity, inclusion, and recruiting the best talent.

👥 We therefore plan to grow our workforce by 30% and hire 1,500 new employees globally within the next year!

🤝 Our ability to win as a team makes OKX a world-leader in #crypto, DeFi & Web3 ⤵️

— OKX (@okx) June 20, 2022

Other crypto platforms such as Binance, Kraken, and FTX had also announced their mass recruitment plans despite the market weakness. Binance (BNB), for instance, said that it has over 2,000 open positions. A Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a comment shared with CoinDesk,

“We will continue to grow our team as planned and see this moment in time as an opportunity to gain access to some of the industry’s best talent.”

Rival exchange Kraken (KRAK) has also extended its arms to hire more than 500 staff. A Kraken blog post notes,

“We have not adjusted our hiring plan, and we do not intend to make any layoffs. We have over 500 roles to fill during the remainder of the year and believe bear markets are fantastic at weeding out the applicants chasing hype from the true believers in our mission.”