Bybit Becomes the Latest Exchange to Retrench its Staff

Bybit trading platform has joined the list of cryptocurrency exchanges that have revealed plans to lay off their staff in a bid to reposition their businesses amid the ongoing crypto market slump. 

 The latest layoff of the Bybit was unveiled through an internal letter shared with employees by the platform’s Chief Executive Officer, Ben Zhou. A copy of the letter from Zhou was posted on Twitter by Chinese independent crypto Journalist, Colin Wu, and has been affirmed by other mainstream media platforms.

In the letter, Zhou emphasized the need to downsize considering some of the staff are not needed in the wake of the menacing economic realities. Zhou said the company’s workforce grew from a few hundred in early 2020 to more than 300% at this time. 

“Our organization size had grown exponentially but the overall business growth did not grow in the same way,” Zhou said in the email. “During the latest staff review, internal efficiency is still the biggest problem that Bybit has now. This means our operational efficiency has gotten worse despite our growing size. It’s evident that we haven’t utilized our fast-growing resources properly.” 

While the letter did not mention the percentage of staff that will be laid off, Colin Wu postulated the figure will be around 20 - 30% of the current workforce of about 2,000. As a general trend when compared with other exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini which have also retrenched 18% and 10% of their workers respectively.

The company attributed to the recent bear market on the stock market and the turmoil in the crypto market, "Bybit is no exception apart from the fact that we have taken extreme steps to maintain our workforce for as long as possible during this crisis." 

Bybit spokesperson said, "to support the smooth transition of the process, affected colleagues will be accorded a severance package and access to Bybit’s employee career support in their job transition."

The current crypto winter has had a far more negative impact on top crypto service offering platforms around the world. Thus far, only Binance exchange and Kraken have confirmed plans to hire additional hands amidst this downturn, a remarkable detour from their peers.