Binance is swimming against the tide of crisis in the crypto market. Amid huge layoffs in the industry, the giant plans to boost its staff by 15% to 30% in 2023, according to the statement made by CEO Changpeng Zhao on Wednesday at the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Last year, the company augmented its team by adding nearly 5,000 employees and raising its headcount from 3,000 to about 8,000.
Competing platforms haven't been doing so well. Many crypto companies were forced to cut down their staff by serious numbers after major currencies plunged and nearly $1.4 trillion evaporated from the market.
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In November 2022, Kraken, the world's third-largest exchange, announced layoffs due to the slump in the crypto market, quoting slowing macroeconomics and turbulent geopolitics as driving forces behind the crisis.
Two days ago, Coinbase informed about laying off another 20% of employees after axing one-fifth of its staff (amounting to about 1,100) in June last year. "In 2022, the crypto market trended downwards along with the broader macroeconomy. We also saw the fallout from unscrupulous actors in the industry, and there could still be further contagion," Brian Armstrong, Coinbase's CEO, wrote in a memo.
CZ seems to be in a completely different mood. "We will continue to build and hopefully we will ramp up again before the next bull market," he declared. Responding to a CNBC question about the fallout caused by the FTX collapse, Zhao observed that the "actual damage is not that high" adding that FTX "is not a big player, they just make a lot of noise."
