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Goldman Sachs still open to crypto hires amid massive 3,200 staff cut

Goldman Sachs digital asset lead Mathew McDermott said the bank remains “hugely positive” on exploring blockchain applications.

Goldman Sachs’ digital assets unit is reportedly open to bolstering its 70-strong team, despite a massive cost-cutting exercise at the firm last month that will see 3,200 employees clear their desks.

Mathew McDermott, global head of digital assets for Goldman Sachs, said the bank remains “hugely supportive” of exploring blockchain applications and that the digital asset division will hire “as appropriate” this year.

The executive made the comments in Hong Kong to Bloomberg last week, noting that the digital assets team has grown from just four staff members in 2020 to around 70 today.

The firm’s supposed openness to beef up its crypto team comes despite the firm cutting up to 3,200 jobs last month, its largest round of layoffs since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

The cuts have reportedly impacted senior, middle and junior-level executives and concentrated on its core trading and banking units, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

In a presentation during Goldman Sachs’ 2023 Investor Day in New York, CFO Denis Coleman reportedly said part of the payroll cuts will also involve holding off on replacing departing employees this year, so it can instead focus on “prioritizing strategic hires.”

Related: Crypto layoffs decelerate, with layoffs falling to 570 in February

In December, McDermott said the firm was seeing opportunities to buy crypto companies that are “priced more sensibly” after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, adding that they are already doing its due diligence on some crypto firms.

He noted that while FTX was a “poster child” of the space, ultimately, the underlying tech behind the industry “continues to perform.”

Crypto firms cut nearly 3,000 jobs in January despite Bitcoin’s rise

It was a tough month for crypto employees, with at least 14 firms announcing staff reductions, including Coinbase, Gemini, Digital Currency Group, ConsenSys and Blockchain.com.

Crypto companies tightened their purse strings in the first month of 2023, with at least 2,900 crypto staff cut loose across 14 crypto firms in January.

The latest firm to reportedly initiate a layoff is the crypto infrastructure provider Prime Trust, which has reportedly reduced its employee count by a third.

The reduction would equate to an estimated 100 or so staff cut, as Prime had 312 employees on LinkedIn at the time of writing.

Other recent cuts over the last few days include 30 staff from the crypto platform Matrixport being let go, according to a Jan. 27 Bloomberg report, while an earlier Jan. 23 report from The Information said that roughly 100 staff were laid off from the crypto exchange Gemini.

The largest staff layoff for the month was initiated by crypto exchange Coinbase, which reduced its headcount by around 950 employees on Jan. 10.

Its peer exchanges Crypto.com, Luno and Huobi trailed with reductions of around 500, 330 and 320 employees respectively.

Embattled crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG) and its subsidiaries similarly saw significant layoffs with 485 workers sacked in January alone as the firm navigates a financial crisis.

The DCG-owned Luno saw the most layoffs, while DCG itself slashed 66 employees, its subsidiary lending platform Genesis cut 63 jobs and its asset management firm HQ Digital shuttered, affecting 26 staff.

Related: Crypto recruitment execs reveal the safest jobs amid layoff season

Rounding out the list were the 200 members of staff let go by crypto bank Silvergate, the 110 employees cut from the Blockchain.com exchange and the 96 staff terminated from MetaMask’s parent company, ConsenSys.

Meanwhile, 20 staff members were let go from the nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace SuperRare.

These staff cuts came despite Bitcoin (BTC) performing strongly in the month, targeting nearly $25,000 as institutional demand has continued to increase.

However, the large-scale crypto industry layoffs were not in isolation. Around 48,000 people in January alone were let go from just four companies: Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce.

While some may believe there’s more gloom ahead, crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital believes there’s never been a better time to start a blockchain company, claiming that bear markets provide “less noise and distraction from building.”

ConsenSys slashes headcount 11% as chief economist reveals formula for adoption

ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin confirmed the company would be cutting 96 of its staff to focus its resources on its core businesses.

ConsenSys, the parent company behind MetaMask, is letting go of 11% of its workforce, with CEO Joseph Lubin blaming “uncertain market conditions” brought on by recent collapses.

In a blog post from ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin on Jan. 18, the blockchain firm CEO said “poorly behaved” centralized finance actors have cast a “broad pall on our ecosystem that we will all need to work through.”

Lubin said the decision will impact 96 employees and is part of plans to focus its resources on its core businesses.

Speaking to Cointelegraph a few days before the layoffs were officially announced — though after they had been widely reported — Lex Sokolin, the chief cryptoeconomics officer of ConsenSys, said that the industry was still far from mass adoption globally.

“We’re still in a place where this is emerging technology. It’s not entirely well understood by the whole public,” he said.

According to ConsenSys, over 30 million users each month during the last bull run were using MetaMask to access DeFi protocols, mint and trade nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and participate in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). While promising, that’s a drop in the ocean globally.

“MetaMask has 30 million monthly users and in Web3, there are maybe 500 million addresses,” Sokolin said. “But that’s not five billion people.”

Asked when crypto will see mainstream adoption, Sokolin said it was all about having enough compelling use cases for crypto, as well as a thriving ecosystem to support it.

Lex Sokolin, chief cryptoeconomist at ConsenSys. Source: Lex Sokolin

He also rejected the idea that it will come as a result of better user experience and clearer regulations.

“They’re not the things that people say [such as] ‘when is UI going to be better’, or ‘when is regulation going to make it better.’ Those are important, but […] they’re not the catalyst,” said Sokolin, adding:

“The catalyst of things is, one: Is there going to be enough stuff to buy on Web3 that I want to own?”

“If I live in Web3 and my avatar and my social media and my data and my status as a person, prestige, community belonging […] is tied to me owning digital objects […] you’re gonna inevitably get to a place where everyone wants to be doing commercial transactions in Web3.”

“So for me, economic adoption is the most important thing. Because it’s going to pull the rest of it into the ecosystem.”

Related: Crypto adoption in 2022: What events moved the industry forward?

In his latest post, Lubin said the company will be focused on streaming its workforce and focusing its business on core value drivers, including end-user custody solution MetaMask, developer platform Infura, and “new offerings” that grow Web3 commerce and DAO communities.

FTX ex-staffer: Extravagant expenditures and cult-like worshipping of SBF

A former FTX employee has revealed details regarding the lavish expenditures of the exchange as well as its intense company culture.

A former employee of crypto exchange FTX has seemingly exposed the company’s excessive luxury expenditures, obsessive workplace culture and grueling work hours that led to the hiring of a company psychiatrist in the year before its collapse. 

Danielle Cloud, who worked in FTX’s marketing department, posted a series of tweets on Dec. 13 saying that FTX hired her in October 2021 and she resigned roughly two weeks ago.

“Things felt off. Cult-like,” Cloud wrote, describing the feeling when she first joined the exchange and comparing it to fraudulent ventures such as the luxury music festival Fyre Festival and health technology company Theranos.

She claimed to have “never heard of” FTX or its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, when she started but said “everyone employed at FTX was obsessed” with him.

“I supposed it made sense. The kid was young, the principles were revolutionary, the ideas were golden. […] Who was I to challenge that?”

Danielle Cloud (front row, center left) pictured with other FTX US employees in February 2022. Image: FTX US President Brett Harrison’s Twitter

Cloud claimed the “best way” to land a role at FTX was to “be the female spouse of an existing employee” who could apparently within “a month or two” make their way into an executive position.

“Those who challenged it were churned,” she claimed.

Time off from work was also a “joke,” according to Cloud. “The work week was Monday to Sunday,” she said. A coworker was “chewed out” for asking if the company had time off for Thanksgiving.

Cloud with an unknown person at SALT’s Crypto Bahamas conference in May. The event was co-hosted by FTX. Image: Instagram

Cloud started as a Know Your Customer (KYC) analyst at FTX US, the company’s United States arm, and was promoted to a full-time marketing role in May 2022 — a position that required her “to work out of the Bahamas majority of the time.”

FTX’s excess luxury expenditures

“The entire operation was iconically and moronically inefficient,” Cloud said, regarding the exchange’s headquarters in the Bahamas. “I never knew all the things money could buy.”

She claimed FTX either purchased or rented multimillion-dollar homes for its executives, who threw lavish house parties and had private chefs.

Employees were provided “expensed stays in luxury hotels” in addition to access to the “half dozen condos” rented or bought by the company.

FTX’s Bahamian office had “food catered 24/7” with employee perks purported to include free groceries, a monthly pop-up barber and fortnightly massages.

A still from a video taken by Cloud depicting an FTX work party at the Albany resort in the Bahamas. Bankman-Fried was known to reside at the location. Image: Instagram

The Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) on Dec. 13 filed a lawsuit against Bankman-Fried, claiming he used FTX customer funds for luxury real estate purchases.

FTX reportedly spent over $250 million on real estate, buying 35 properties in the Bahamas, according to a Dec. 13 report from CNBC.

Why a shrink was brought into FTX

Due to the high workload demands, Cloud said that Bankman-Fried brought in a psychiatrist, Dr. George K. Lerner.

A now-deleted profile on Bankman-Fried written in September by venture firm Sequoia Capital described Lerner as “the person who knows [Bankman-Fried] the best” and “the FTX company therapist.”

Cloud said Lerner was “propositioned as a coach” there to consult on business growth and was said to be “critical” to FTX employee satisfaction and its retention strategy, but alleged Lerner asked her intimate questions about her relationship with her fiancé.

Related: ‘You can commit fraud in shorts and T-shirts in the sun,’ says SDNY attorney on SBF indictment

She also claimed administration staff were “pushed to illegally ship prescriptions to Nassau,” which were written in California and Florida.

At a congressional hearing on Dec. 13, FTX CEO John Ray said there was “no recordkeeping whatsoever” at the company, and that many invoices and expense receipts were submitted through the messaging app Slack.

FTX also used the accounting software Quickbooks, according to Ray, who said he has “nothing against Quickbooks” but it’s not a tool “for a multi-billion-dollar company.”