- Binance is weighing staff cuts as the world's top crypto exchange looks ahead to the next market rally.
- "This is not a case of rightsizing, but rather, re-evaluating whether we have the right talent and expertise in critical roles."
Binance is weighing staff cuts as the world's largest crypto exchange by volume looks ahead to the next market rally.
In a statement shared with Insider, a Binance spokesperson said the company has grown from 30 to nearly 8,000 employees worldwide over the last six years.
"As we prepare for the next major bull cycle, it has become clear that we need to focus on talent density across the organization to ensure we remain nimble and dynamic," the statement added.
Binance maintained that the company is still seeking to fill hundreds of open roles at the exchange.
"This is not a case of rightsizing, but rather, re-evaluating whether we have the right talent and expertise in critical roles," the statement said. "This will include looking at certain products and business units to ensure our resources are allocated properly to reflect the evolving demands of users and regulators."
The statement came in response to Insider's query to Binance about independent crypto journalist Colin Wu's tweets that said the company may lay off 20% of its employees in June.
"The compensation plan will be formulated according to different situations in different places," his tweet, which cited unnamed sources, said. "The layoffs may be related to the poor overall market and the large expansion before."
But Patrick Hillmann, Binance's chief communications officer, tweeted in response that the exchange was "not cutting 20% of employees as a cost-cutting measure."
CEO Changpeng Zhao denied any mass layoffs and said the company has been profitable since the year it was founded.
Instead, the crypto exchange has a "bottom out program," which the exec said routinely weeds out staff that may not be a good fit for the firm.
—CZ Binance (@cz_binance) May 31, 2023
"We constantly say goodbye to people who are not strong fits with the company. Many of them are great people or high performers, but may not fit our unique culture/situation," Zhao tweeted. "Small example, WFH is not for everyone. This 'program' is constant. I push for it on a weekly basis. There are no % of people we have to 'push out'. I also push for cost cutting, servers, flights, meals, etc, every week too."
Meanwhile, Binance faces a slew of regulatory probes with reports of ongoing investigations from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Internal Revenue Service, and US Justice Department.