Despite Virtual Asset 'Layoff Wave'... Binance to Increase Hiring by Up to 30%

[Asia Economy New York=Special Correspondent Joselgina] Amid a series of setbacks in the virtual asset industry leading to large-scale layoffs, Binance, the world's largest exchange, plans to expand hiring by up to 30% this year.

According to the US economic media CNBC on the 10th (local time), Zhao Changpeng, CEO of Binance, announced at a conference held in Switzerland that the company plans to increase its workforce by 15-30% this year. Binance, the world's largest exchange, had already expanded its staff from 3,000 to about 8,000 last year.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

This contrasts with last year's virtual asset industry, which saw consecutive layoffs due to the decline in the value of virtual assets such as Bitcoin and the FTX bankruptcy filing incident. In November last year, Kraken announced it would lay off 30% of its employees. Earlier this year, Huobi and Coinbase each announced a 20% reduction in their workforce. CNBC added that Coinbase's layoff this year is the second one following the one in June last year.

In contrast, CEO Zhao expressed his intention to expand the workforce, stating that the company needs to "properly organize the company structure" in preparation for the next virtual asset bull market. He said that Binance is currently inefficient and added, "We will continue to build (the organization) until the next bull market comes. I hope we can accelerate again."

CEO Zhao also spoke about the FTX collapse incident on the same day. Regarding accusations from some quarters that he was behind the FTX collapse, he drew a clear line, saying, "I did not design (the FTX collapse incident)."

Earlier, Binance had agreed to acquire some business units of FTX, which faced a liquidity crisis in November last year, but withdrew the offer after just one day. Earlier that month, when suspicions about FTX's financial instability arose, Binance publicly declared the disposal of FTX-issued tokens, FTT, which triggered a bank run (a situation where customers withdraw funds all at once).

In a separate interview, he also stated, "Although there is clearly damage from the (FTX collapse), the industry will be fine." He said, "The actual damage is not that great," adding, "FTX was not a big player; it just made the industry noisy."