[2013-03-19] Crypto Exchange Bithumb to Reduce Staff By Up to 50%

[cybersofts]

Bithumb, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, plans to cut its staffing levels by up to 50 percent, according to a CoinDesk Korea report issued Monday, a move that would reduce its number of employees from 310 at the start of March to around 150.

When reached, an official at the company confirmed the 50 percent figure, adding that it expects those departing will mostly be employees who already want to leave the company.

“Voluntary retirement is part of our support program for former employees and is intended to provide assistance and training for job placement,” said the Bithumb official. “Apart from that, [Bithumb’s] trading volume has decreased compared to the previous year, [so] we are trying to provide internal measures. We will continue to add necessary personnel for various new businesses.”

The move comes on the heels of similar decisions by other cryptocurrency companies that have been forced to respond to the ongoing decline in the value of the market in recent months.

The company behind cryptocurrency project Dash said earlier this month that it’s also reducing its staffing levels in a cost-cutting effort brought on by the “crypto winter.” Similarly, since the start of the year, smart contract auditing firm Hosho has said it’s laying off 80 percent of staff, and blockchain project Nebulas has cut numbers by 60 percent.

Ethereum studio Consensys announced that projects under its umbrella would have to find financing or also face cut-backs late last year.


Reference: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-exchange-bithumb-slashing-staff-numbers-by-up-to-50

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[btyco]

The winter lasted a long time and affected investors and staff. Without trades these exchanges don't make enough money so they have no choice but to lay people off, hopefully with a good redundancy payout

[hugeblack]

It seems that those companies are looking at the management plans in the short term, do not know how such a thing can happen with famous platforms?
Also, what is the effect of this reduction on technical support? Protection platform? Developed? Much of this has to be taken with a long-term view. The price cannot remain high forever.

I hope not to get another scandal for this platform.

[Harlot]

With the long and extended bear market we have companies within the crypto industry have no choice but to cut their expenses and one of the quickest ways to do it is reducing the number of their staff. This is an inevitable thing to happen for such employees as they all know that companies depends on how strong the market is when it comes to earning their income. I'm just surprised that it took Bithumb this long to do such action when a lot of their competitors in the industry have begun doing it since the early of 2018, it looks like to me that they have tried to wait for the bull market which didn't came at the right time for them to hold any further.

[Zadicar]

Expected thing to happen where a specific company will cut-off expenses by means of decreasing their staffs and the good thing is that they do impose voluntary resignation
on the company which those people who dont like anymore to work do have the choice without forcing to do so. 50% reduction is high but as long Bithumb
wont compromise their service then i dont see for this thing to be a big issue.

[mrdeposit]

Hope it will not affect directly to the quality of service. Low market prices force the exchange management to reduce the staff and it will be tougher to continue in the same mode from my point of view.

[carlfebz2]

Hope it will not affect directly to the quality of service. Low market prices force the exchange management to reduce the staff and it will be tougher to continue in the same mode from my point of view.

Having 310 employees in the past compared to 150 as of recent would really be different but if they can able to cope up and do the job well as usual then it doesnt really matter at all.

[BitHodler]

Hope it will not affect directly to the quality of service. Low market prices force the exchange management to reduce the staff and it will be tougher to continue in the same mode from my point of view.

This exchange had rubbish support already, so it will definitely get worse with way less staff. It's super funny considering that they are one of the main wash trading exchanges that exist today.

It just shows that it's likely not coming from random whales buying/selling their own orders, which would at least generate income for the exchange, but when you are doing it yourself, there is literally zero income.

Another option is that they should stop handing out bonuses to noobs and use these funds to improve their overall quality....

[Kemarit]

Bitmain started to reduced it's employees last year, so just a matter of time before everything connected to crypto, especially exchanges will do the same thing. Those are business decisions, and they can't do anything about it because the market went into a bearish trend and up to this day, there are no signs of the market at least recovering. I just do hope that reducing staff won't affect their services and the performance of their exchange. But I wouldn't be surprised if lots of thread are going to pop-up again and complain about their shitty support,  .

[Slow death]

I wonder:

- these Staff are paid in Bitcoin or in Dollars?

- How did they do when the price of bitcoin was  $1000?

another thing that worries me, they were able to provide good services with these 310 Staff? and if they could not provide good service with 310 staff, will they be able to provide good services with 150 staff?

[btyco]

It could also be due to increasing competition from new exchanges and also the growing domination of binance. It's tough operating exchanges now, they need to offer more to attract investors

[1Referee]

It's called survival of the fittest.

We're better off saying goodbye to these shitcoin exchanges. If the bear market drags on for another year, I'm certain that exchanges like Bithumb will finally throw the towel in the ring. All they have done so far is onboard more get rich quick noobs instead of people who are actually interested in Bitcoin.

The fact that so many exchanges (Bithumb is amongst them) are faking volumes to trap in noobs tells a lot about how crappy this ecosystem has become. The bar is set higher and higher; soon we'll have exchanges wash trade billions on a daily basis to rank up on CMC's list of top volume exchanges.

[stompix]

the good thing is that they do impose voluntary resignation  on the company which those people who dont like anymore to work do have the choice without forcing to do so.

The bad thing is that there are people who want to leave your company!
And if indeed half of them will want to get out, that is showing how pessimistic the people who know the company are about its future.

I wonder:

- these Staff are paid in Bitcoin or in Dollars?

- How did they do when the price of bitcoin was  $1000?

another thing that worries me, they were able to provide good services with these 310 Staff? and if they could not provide good service with 310 staff, will they be able to provide good services with 150 staff?

When the price was 1k$ they didn't have 310 employees.
And maybe the number of clients has also decreased a lot, less support needed, less development, fewer funds for any other activity than keeping the exchange afloat, no more hiring clueless friends just because you can afford out of millions made with useless tokens.

The number of employees in Bithumb surged from 20 in 2017 to 340 last year as it aggressively added new hires amid the skyrocketing value of cryptocurrencies.

https://pulsenews.co.kr/view.php?year=2019&no=35477

[Naida_BR]

I hope that the situation is going to be reversed otherwise we are going to have serious problems.
If companies such Bithumb make such moves we should be concerned. If this continues we are going to have problem when wanting to convert crypto to fiat and vice versa.