Topic: Hiring and firing in the Bitcoin space: Why? (Read 198 times)

Your topic title, “Hiring and firing in the Bitcoin space: Why?”, is incorrect.  I have fixed it appropriately.

Most of these are purely shitcoin companies:


(LOL, layoffs at Coinbase, Opensea, Blockfi, Crypto.com... Why is this posted in Bitcoin Discussion?)

So are some of these (and others are more or less Bitcoiny), so I guess that shitcoins aren’t yet dead:


Solana, FTX, and Circle are competently managed shitcoin businesses.  Solana even has some merits, and some good projects in its ecosystem; it is not entirely a cesspool of worthless shitcoinery.  Bitcoiners beware.  Solana’s and FTX’s founders both recently dropped their masks to reveal an actively anti-Bitcoin agenda.  And they are not stupid.  Writing them off as irrelevant shitcoiners would be stupid.  (Similarly as with Vitalik.)  Circle is a USG-approved proxy for the worst shitcoin Ponzi scam ever invented, so of course it is doing fine.

This is so anti-Bitcoiny that it is pretty much off-topic in Bitcoin Discussion, unless the topic is retitled as a warning to Bitcoin newbies:


So, scam sites designed to swindle people for BTC got into financial trouble?  Who cares?

This is being / has been discussed here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-crypto-exchangeslending-with-financial-problems-5402225
But what I posted here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-crypto-exchangeslending-with-financial-problems-5402225.msg60374187#msg60374187 is still true for some of it.

Not to put to fine a point on it but lets just say a large number of people who were working on the initial integration of this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gemini-exchnage-credit-card-5407197 are no longer needed since it's up and done and running fine. Still need support and stuff, but the team that did a bunch of that work is not needed.

Add in the general slump in the market, the fact that the defi and NFT craziness slowed down you don't need as many people.

-Dave

Over the past month, prominent crypto companies have laid off thousands of employees as they prepare for a long crypto winter. Crypto exchange and trading platforms such as Coinbase, Gemini, Crypto.com are slashing its workforce drastically. Just recently, Crypto startup Blockchain.com says it is laying off 25% of its staff, citing harsh market conditions. The reason is because they want to cut their operating cost to enable them to still be in business.
There has been a general belief that the main reason why most cryptocurrency companies are laying off workers is only because of the bearish market. Although the fall in price of cryptocurrencies is a major reason but there are some other major reasons. Some of them are;

Extravagant spending: When Crypto.com paid an estimated $1.4 billion in becoming a sponsor for the FIFA World Cup and putting its name on what was previously the Staples Center in Los Angeles within six months many crypto companies  including rival firm Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao criticized this extravagant move. The firm also paid $100 million for Matt Damon to star in Crypto.com’s Super Bowl commercial earlier this year and also partnered with French football club Paris Saint Germain (PSG). Binance who has announced that it would employ about 2000 workers recently confessed that it was not easy saying no to Super bowl ads but it was for the good of the firm. Zhao explained that unlike other crypto companies, Binance largely avoided spending big on promotional costs like Super Bowl ads or naming rights to sports arenas, which has helped its ability to grow despite rocky market conditions. “|. Nexo, a crypto lending platform, said it will continue growing throughout the bear market and is seeking to fill a range of positions that include engineers and marketers. The company claims to have tripled its headcount in the past year while keeping its “expenses optimized and fundamentals solid,” according to a tweet that directed talent to its We are not spoiled by VCs, Hollywood actors & sports teams,” Nexo said. “We HODL and grow our people, regardless of market conditions.”  Most companies a now suffering from financial constrains because they failed to save for the rainy days.

Poor management: When mangers fail to apply several management principles in the company’s operations, it become counterproductive.  It was reported that the main reason why Celsius a decentralized crypto lending platform was forced to halt all user withdraws was because it ran out of funds to repay depositors due to a series of risky decentralized finance bets.  Recently, cryptocurrency exchange CoinFlex issued a new token to raise funds in a bid to restart withdrawals for its customers, after one client failed to repay a massive debt. CoinFlex cannot automatically liquidate the investor collateral because due to poor management the trader had a clause in his account that did not allow that to happen.

Inexperience: Most companies join the crypto space during the bullish market and have no experience about the opposite. In order to survive in this winter, these new companies must  laying off workers. But experience players in the crypto space understand the market and have planned ahead of this period. Kraken an old player in the industry said they have no intentions of making any layoffs and see the current market downturn as a “time to build. It claims to not have adjusted its hiring plans and has 500 positions to fill throughout the remainder of this year. In the statement, the company emphasized it is not guided by “short-term opportunities to maximize profit” and has learned how to navigate through tough times from experience with previous cycles, having been established back in 2011. Many crypto firms have been through downturns before, and have become better at managing their treasuries.