Amid a spate of crypto layoffs, Binance is reportedly in hiring mode.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange expects to increase its workforce by 15-30% this year, CEO Changpeng Zhao said at an industry conference on Wednesday (Jan 11).

“We will continue to build and hopefully rally again before the next bull market,” said Zhao, whose remarks at the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland, were reported by CNBC.

These new hires would follow the nearly 5,000 workers the exchange added last year, Zhao told the conference.

Contacted by PYMNTS for comment, a Binance spokesperson confirmed the figures in the CNBC report.

Binance’s hiring plans are coming as several other cryptocurrency firms cut jobs in the wake of the massive FTX crash and a broader industry downturn.

Among the companies laying off workers is Coinbase, which announced on Tuesday (Jan 10) that it would lay off 950 of its roughly 4,700 employees, a 20% reduction.

“As we looked at our 2023 scenarios, it became clear that we would need to reduce expenses to increase our chances of getting it right in each scenario,” CEO Brian Armstrong said in a message to employees.

“While it’s always painful to be separated from our peers, there was no way to significantly reduce our expenses without considering personnel changes.”

These layoffs followed an 18% reduction in June, as well as a smaller round of layoffs (65 employees) in November.

Last week there were reports that cryptocurrency lender Genesis was laying off 30% of its employees, at the same time it was considering bankruptcy.

In November, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, which had tripled its workforce as the cryptocurrency market grew, cut its staff levels by 30%.

“Since the beginning of this year, macroeconomic and geopolitical factors have influenced financial markets,” said Kraken co-founder and CEO Jesse Powell. “This resulted in significantly lower trading volumes and fewer customer registrations.”

Binance, meanwhile, has been facing its own problems of late. On Tuesday (June 10), a Bloomberg News report said the company’s stablecoin was apparently undercollateralized up to $1 billion at various times throughout 2020 and 2021.

And on Monday (June 9), Forbes published an analysis that said the company was “bleeding assets,” with $12 billion lost in less than two months, and a wave of withdrawals in December was higher than Zhao ever realized. had said.

Binance has disputed the analysis, telling PYMNTS that Forbes’ analysis was “ill-conceived” and saying the post’s numbers were “off by billions.”

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