The cryptocurrency industry has lost more than $2 trillion in value in just over a year, the CEO of what was once the world's second-largest crypto exchange is facing prison timeand crypto billionaires have seen more than $115 billion of their fortunes have evaporated since March. But the CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, says he's still hiring (or at least planning to).
Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, said on Wednesday that after increasing his company's workforce from 3,000 to nearly 8,000 last year, he hopes to add another 15-30% to that number by 2023. Despite the sweeping defeat in the crypto space Known as Crypto Winter, CZ is confident that his company, and the entire industry, will weather the storm.
โThere is definitely damage, [but] the industry will be fineโ, CZ told CNBC at the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland on Wednesday. "We will continue to build and hopefully pick up again before the next bull market."
Binance's planned hiring spree comes as other major crypto firms are pulling out. coin baseThe largest US-based crypto exchange announced on Tuesday that it Lay off 25% of its workforce, with CEO Brian Armstrong saying the move was due to the prolonged bear market in the industry and a "broader economic downturn."
Multiple cryptocurrency data firms have also claimed that, like its peers, Binance is rapidly losing assets as cryptocurrency prices fall. On Wednesday, Forbes published an analysis including data from these firms who said that Binance is โbleeding assetsโ, losing 15% of its total since December 13.
Binance did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for feedback on the hiring spree or Forbes' claims the company lost 15% of its assets since December 13.
โThe bottom line is that a growing number of Binance investors are leaving the exchange or drastically reducing their exposure to it.โ Forbes' Javier Paz concluded.
But CZ was quick to ignore the claims on Wednesday. "I think they may need an app to check the crypto market," he said. tweeted in response to the article. And just hours before the story broke, CZ took to twitter to say: "More FUD incoming, it will ignore it!"
The acronym FUD stands for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt." Crypto bulls often use it to respond to criticism, arguing that the crypto media and critics are trying to create โfear, uncertainty and doubtโ in their community.
CZ went on to reference number 4 on Wednesday, which refers to a January 4th tweet which he wrote where one of his New Year's resolutions was: โ4. Ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc.โ
"Okay, I'll do 4 and ignore from here," he said.
Still, there's no denying that Binance's BNB token is down more than 22% from its November high; the data comes from CoinMarketCap.comwhich owned by CZ via Binanceโand Binance revealed in a transparency statement from select crypto holdings in November that it had $17 billion in BNB.
BNB is a token native to the Binance blockchain and is used by users to transact or pay fees on the platform. In addition to the demonstrable losses on the token, there are concerns that Binance may be using it as collateral for loans, just like the now bankrupt. FTX did it with its own native token, FTT. But a Binance spokesperson saying FortuneJeff John Roberts's in December that the exchange has never used BNB as collateral. And CZ's latest announcement of a hiring spree doesn't align with a trade back on the ropes.
Or if? In June last year, just months before FTX collapsed, the exchange's then-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said he planned to "keep growing" even as other companies began to cut back.
โSometimes when other Zig, you Zag,โ the disgraced founder, who now faces up to 20 years in prison for misrepresenting the health of his exchange, wrote at that time.
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