A look at the crazy hiring spree crypto firms went on this year

The crypto industry went all out on hiring this year, spending millions of dollars to attract key talent from tech companies across the world.

Throughout this year, The Block documented the steady talent drain from traditional finance and tech, and have observed that token incentives are one of the main selling points for jumping ship. According to The New York Times, Google’s weekly executive agenda now includes a discussion on retention — including keeping staff from going to crypto firms.

For this article, The Block collected responses from 27 crypto firms detailing how many people they hired this year and their current headcount. The numbers show that companies expanded rapidly, particularly in the first half of this year, with many doubling or even tripling their headcount. 

Hundreds of new hires per company

Together, the 27 crypto businesses we spoke to hired a total of more than 8,400 people in the last year — an average of 311 people each. 

The firms that hired the most were crypto exchanges. Coinbase and Binance, which each hired more than 1,500 people this year, led the way, with Kraken not far behind at 1,035. Gemini hired 402 people and Bitstamp picked up 200. FTX was the outlier — despite major growth in market share this year, it only hired 37 people.

On the other hand, FTX.US hired more people than its main exchange, with 73 new members of staff this year. In the same region, it was outpaced by OKCoin US, which hired 243 people.

Beyond exchanges, investment firms also stood out for how many people they added. Digital Currency Group hired nearly 500 new staff members and Galaxy Digital picked up 160. Ethereum-focused incubator ConsenSys also reversed its multi-year trend of making cutbacks by adding more than 200 people.

Some new firms also saw big increases. Take crypto data start-up Nansen for example. It started the year with just seven people, while closing it at 75 — nearly a 1,000% increase. Earlier this month, it raised $75 million at a $750 million valuation.

Other firms that have been capitalizing on market conditions have grown quickly. Crypto staking provider Figment grew from 26 staff to 118 over the year. That’s on the back of the massive rise in popularity for staking, a factor that has resulted in the business making $10 million a month in revenue.

With the new hires, many firms are now looking after huge teams. Binance leads the pack with 3,000, just ahead of Coinbase at 2,781 (although the data Coinbase provided was only up until the end of Q3) and Kraken at 2,300.

While there was a big expansion this year on the whole, the pace of hiring certainly slowed down in the second half of 2021, as the market was a bit more rocky. In fact, many crypto firms fell short of their end-of-year hiring goals. 

Out of the 12 companies that provided The Block end of year estimates back in July, only five of them hit those estimates. Four of them landed fewer than a third of the hires they expected to make. BlockFi, which said it had 900 employees in July and hoped to have 1,000 by the end of the year, saw no significant change in headcount.

What’s driving the expansions?

Two key factors are driving this trend.

First, the sheer amount of money within the industry has increased thanks to rising coin prices. Bitcoin saw a 138% rally to $69,000 since the start of the year. And bitcoin’s rise was even outmatched by coins like solana, which went up by 12,900%. This has led to very profitable businesses, such as crypto staking businesses, some of which are seeing $10 million in revenue per month. 

The other element is the amount of funding that has taken place. As of November, $25.1 billion had been invested into crypto firms this year, providing a warchest for firms looking to expand their teams and attract good talent.