The cryptocurrency business has misplaced greater than $2 trillion in worth in simply over a 12 months, the CEO of what was the world’s second largest crypto change is dealing with jail time, and crypto billionaires have watched greater than $115 billion of their fortunes evaporate since March. However the CEO of the world’s largest crypto change, Binance, says he’s nonetheless hiring (or at the very least planning to).
Changpeng Zhao, higher referred to as CZ, mentioned on Wednesday that after rising his agency’s headcount from 3,000 individuals to almost 8,000 final 12 months, he expects so as to add one other 15% to 30% to that quantity in 2023. Regardless of the broad rout within the crypto house referred to as the Crypto Winter, CZ stays assured that his agency—and the entire business—will climate the storm.
“There’s positively injury [but] the business can be positive,” CZ instructed CNBC on the Crypto Finance Convention in St. Moritz, Switzerland, on Wednesday. “We are going to proceed to construct and hopefully we’ll ramp up once more earlier than the following bull market.”
Binance’s deliberate hiring spree comes whereas different main crypto companies are pulling again. Coinbase, the most important U.S.-based crypto change, introduced on Tuesday that it’ll lay off 25% of its workforce, with CEO Brian Armstrong saying the transfer was as a result of extended bear market within the business and a “broader financial downturn.”
A number of cryptocurrency knowledge companies have additionally claimed that, like its friends, Binance is shedding property shortly as crypto costs fall. On Wednesday, Forbes revealed an evaluation together with knowledge from these companies which mentioned that Binance is “bleeding property,” shedding 15% of its whole since Dec. 13.
Binance didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark in regards to the hiring spree or Forbes’ claims that the corporate misplaced 15% of its property since Dec. 13.
“The underside line is {that a} rising variety of Binance traders are leaving the change or sharply lowering their publicity to it,” Forbes’ Javier Paz concluded.
However CZ was fast to brush off the claims on Wednesday. “Assume they might want an app to verify the crypto market,” he tweeted in response to the article. And only a few hours earlier than the story went stay, CZ took to Twitter to say: “Extra FUD incoming, will ignore!”
The acronym “F.U.D.” stands for “worry, uncertainty, and doubt.” Crypto bulls typically use it to answer criticism, arguing that the media and crypto critics try to create “worry, uncertainty, and doubt” of their neighborhood.
CZ went on to reference the quantity 4 on Wednesday, which refers to a Jan. 4 tweet that he wrote the place certainly one of his new years’ resolutions was: “4. Ignore FUD, pretend information, assaults, and many others.”
“Alright, will do 4, and ignore from right here,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, there’s no denying that Binance’s BNB token has dropped greater than 22% since its November excessive—the information comes from CoinMarketCap.com, which is owned by CZ by Binance—and Binance revealed in a transparency assertion of choose crypto holdings in November that it held $17 billion in BNB.
BNB is a token that’s native to Binance’s blockchain and is utilized by customers to make merchants or pay charges on the platform. On prime of the demonstrable losses within the token, there are issues that Binance may very well be utilizing it as collateral for loans, identical to the now bankrupt FTX did with its personal native token, FTT. However a Binance spokesperson instructed Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts in December that the change has by no means used BNB as collateral. And CZ’s newest announcement for a hiring spree doesn’t line up with an change that’s on the ropes.
Or does it? In June of final 12 months, simply months earlier than FTX collapsed, the change’s then-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried mentioned he deliberate to “continue to grow” whilst different corporations started to chop again.
“Typically, when others Zig, you Zag,” the disgraced founder, who’s now dealing with as much as 20 years in jail for misrepresenting the well being of his change, wrote at the time.
