Fallen Crypto Faithful Seek Refuge in TradFi

head count by and crypto dot Com by five. So suddenly you've got very skilled workforce redundant looking for new jobs in markets where like blockchain capability can be in very high in So what happens to these former crypto employees. Thanks for actually finding it quite difficult, incumbents for finding it a bit tough to get some of this talent. In the last six to nine months, an increasing number of them are getting snatched up by traditional finance firms

or CHAD five. The skills that these talented engineers and developers have accumulated is now very much in demand with trad five firms who want to explore the crypto space and experiment with blockchain technologies. Today I'm joined by Bloomberg reporters Will Shaw and I Sha Gany. I'm William Sure, I cover finance from Bloomberg in London. I'm Agani. I'm

the fintech reporter for Bloomberg News in London. To explore why Chad five institutions are swooping in for laid off DeFi experts, Hi Will and I Sha Nice of you to join us. So you guys worked on a story about what's going on with crypto workers and what is actually happening. There were lots of firings. What what did we find out? Who and start Will? So, Yeah, as as everyone knows, like crypto has been has been really

crashing this year. Lots of like major companies working in that area have been like beefing up their staff very rapidly prior to the market meltdown. Um once prices started falling, they had suddenly had to contract quite quick quickly in terms of the staff that they employ. So we saw firms like bit Pander and block block five slashing jobs and one of the most prominent firms to do so was was coin Base which is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US. They cut about one one d staff

or their workforce in June. So suddenly you've got very skilled workforce redundant looking for new jobs in markets where like blockchain capability can be in very high demand. And of course this happened in the summer, late summer, and so we thought it was a great opportunity to see, well where are all these people going, and have been speaking to a few fin techs and they said that this is hot, hot talent and basically very attractive. Want

to hear them up. And it wasn't just the fintech we discovered through our reporting, it was also big tech and the traditional banks, so Wall Street and in the city of London. So why do banks want crypto? People are blockchain stack tech stuff. Well, I think the first thing to say about banks is they're very secretive about what they do around crypto, around many things, around around many things. Yeah, I mean that this is like a very contentious subject for them a lot of the time.

Someone someone senior said to me the other day, the first thing about banks and crypto, the first rule is you don't talk about crypto. Now we have to have a fight club moment in the background some audio about about bike club. UM. But they are, yeah, they are expanding their capabilities in this area to some degree that seems to be to do with crypto trading. UM. A lot of it also appears to be more interested in the technology underneath in the blockchain and what that can

do for trading more conventional securities. So we know, for example, that City is exploring how it can use blockchain in the bond settlement process. UM. So these big banks are or have been advertising for key roles around blockchain and crypto in in recent weeks. So City had been advertising for a director level digital asset risk manager for cryptocurrencies.

Goldman Sacks has been looking for vice presidents UM again around crypto and blockchain, and JP Morgan's asset and wealth management business, which looks after two point seven trillion dollars worth of assets, is looking for what has been looking at least someone to oversee blockchain strategy including crypto and

digital cur So those jobs definitely are out there. But having said that, we wrote this story late summers and considering the way the markets are right now, who knows what will happen, But just to add to the UM. We spoke to Thomas Olsen, who's that Bain and Company, and he was working in blockchain for the last ten years, and he said something really interesting in that banks are actually finding it quite difficult, incumbents of finding it a bit tough to get some of this talent in the

last six to nine months. So they're very much using the crypto winter as opportunity to speed up, to get up to speed with um what was happening in crypto, and to skal up and to have some of this talent um that they didn't have before. All of these developers and folks who are specializing in compliance who also had the crypto um knowledge as well. So it was a great opportunity. And he said the next six to nine months was very much the time that they wanted

to bring these people on board. So a lot of crypto originally, or like the Crypto ETOs, was very much anti bank, anti world street, andro centralization, right, So I wonder, like,

how is it to go from that to banks? And we'll banks really want everyone there, right, Like I think we spoke to someone who said, oh, we don't really want them if they were like going after us before like I think there has been like a bit of smirking at the top levels of some banks, the fact that these people who have been sneering at the traditional banking sect for years and thinking they were above it

all as suddenly completely on the rocks. One banking executive said to me, you know, we're watching with the interest and we will hire some of them, but we certainly won't be paying the premium of the month that we would have had to in years gone by, And I think they're you know, the culture of crypto and the culture of all street banking are very different. So obviously conventional banking is like much more tightly regulated. Compliance is a much more important area than it is for than

it has been traditionally for crypto firms. So bank risk management as well, Yeah, risk management and banks will be expecting people joining from crypto firms to show that they understand how to how to perform in a tough regulatory environment. But of course a lot of these roles, I mean, there's a bit of a revolving door within these different sectors. A lot of folks who have gone into banking right now or had come from crypto perhaps weren't banking before.

That would have been at startups before even that UM there obviously high, highly talented people with lots of skill sets being in both incumbents and then also fast growing startups. So I think for a lot of banks, they're also the sort of skill set they're bringing, and the fact that they are very much fast learners and can adapt very quickly is also an attractive process, even if they

don't have all the skill sets to begin with. So you also spoke to fintech firms right that we're hiring you think you had another story earlier this year bar Revolute Um for a sort of US listeners. It's it's a big it's available in the US, but it's more popular in the UK. It's sort of a payments comp. It was a payments company originally, right. It became famous because it'll let you pay in different currencies in different countries. And they have a big crypto business and they're hiring

still absolutely and um. We reported on how they had one their UK registration for their crypto asset business, which was a massive win for them and in terms of expanding in the UK, it's a huge thing. Earlier in the summer they told us that they were increasing their crypto headcount by twenty globally, and that would mostly in

the UK, US and across Europe. They opened Crypto Hub in cypruss So you can just see by that characterization that there's huge growth in terms of their crypto business there. But with other FinTechs as well, even if they weren't focusing on crypto, they kind of need. That's sort of talented pool that we're talking about because we're talking about developers, we're talking about UM people. As we said, you have experienced in regulation or in food, so there is hot

talent out there so UM. Some of the other fintech companies that we spoke to was Plaid, Stacks Um, also Starling bank Block and they all said that this is hot talent and they encourage people crypto experience to apply. After the break, we'll hear more from a Shan Will on why x crypto workers are moving from the fight

to track five. So what's the reverse angle here, Like, what could happen to crypto if thanks all of us a sudden started becoming super attractive or actually the only place for an ho where you can work out if you're very good, and they'll be able to pay you more because crypto potentially has less money. Now, do you think they'll be potential drain of talent there or like will we see when the money when going? If it goes back up, then they'll be rehired. Like is it

an endless back and forth? I think crypto firms will be very much hoping that they're they're down but not out. No one knows what's going to happen to bitcoin next. You know, it could go to zero, it could surge. These companies could all be back on their feet, and no doubt they'll be. They'll be hoping, They'll be hoping that that will be the case and that this this is not the end of the industry. When we spoke to coin base, they were still very much looking to

the future. Um. They said they're they're continuing to hire permission critical roles and when we look at their website, they're still hiring for about sixty positions. UM. When we last slurt in in recent weeks, that's very very much less obviously than the over attis and then got laid off. They're still ticking along. When we spoke to them, they said, we remain focused on our mission of promoting economic freedom around the world. So yeah, I don't know what was

the bank slogan equivalent of that. I don't I don't know if they have it, Like, yeah, it's it's a different inspirational thing if you're trying to find something that moves you to a job. But yeah, you you mentioned coin based. You know, many of these companies have been in crypto for coin Based was like one of the one of the companies that was there from the starts, so they are kind of used to this, like having to contract and expand contracting expanse, so it's not really

new to them. So they probably already have a playbook of how to like rehire what to rehire in They probably I would imagine many of them might know where they cut first. Is it maybe like customer server like areas that you know are easier to like scale up and down, whereas perhaps you always need ahead of security

like because you always have of those assets. Yeah, and the ones that the roles that coin based are trying to fill a very functional, very sort of sensible, grown up kind of roles like business operations and strategy, human resources, recruiting,

legal and compliance. Of course, they're like now a listed company I compared to their previous Yeah, and these are these are companies, you know, not not coin based, but the companies and professionals that very clever, very skilled, have like often lived on the seat of their pants, flying by the seat of their pants a bit, I think. And they'll be they'll you know, their survivors, they know how to adapt. They'll be they'll be hoping and planning

on a return. I'm sure. Absolutely. They seem very bullish and that's it. They believe in crypto. They believe and that's why they're there. And they've seen these cycles before. So for a lot of them who have remained feel like, well, we've been through this already, so why would we leave now? Yeah, And you know it's not just I mean, we're obviously in a crypto winter, but it's definitely not easy times for in general and perhaps finance and perhaps in this

case the country at large. So so so I wonder, like, you know, uh, we're talking about crypto, but maybe like they will, they will recover faster than at tech firm like you know, you cover like final pay later a lot. So you know, there's firms there whose valuations have been slashed. So in a sense I wonder like, do you see them perhaps rehiring more? Do you see like tech firms? Like? What might that such a good question? We just saw

Clanna reports that Klanner last week. We're looking into more cards, especially if companies dealing with high interest rates who are lending. We'll have to keep an eye out on that. UM. I think different firms and different sections of fintech will fare better or worse in what we're going into right now, especially if you're a wealth management UM app, maybe you'll

do better right UM, it's really hard to tell. But again, a lot of these FinTechs, they survived the pandemic before that, they got through Brexit, They've been in quite a volatile situation for a while, and they've been challenging the incumbents for all these years. So I think a lot of them will feel rather bullish and they're like, Okay, this is a challenge we can take on. They'll tell us that they're absolutely but the state we're in, I just

don't know. And we're in a very difficult global economic environment at the moment, and so workers inherently might well feel at this time they'd rather be a well established firm that they know isn't going to go bust. They'd rather be at a Wall Street banker or or a hedge fund, for example, and that it's better to be away from the inherent risk that surrounds like crypto companies. But if the economy, if and when the economy gets back on its feet, that that whole calculation may shift.

People may feel ready to get stuck back into like risk your roles where they can you know, make even more money, where the options in a crypto company become worth more money. If they're being paid in those like things, things could shift quite quickly. And you mentioned talken payments in some cases, like the tokens are part of the compensation.

So in a market that's crashing, like you really have to believe in the company and what the value that company isn't perhaps that it's token we'll go up as part of your compensation. I just spoke to a guy who who had left coin based recently. He was on

a great package. He was on about a hundred seventy five thousand dollars plus a generous stock option package, and he said one of the issues was that colleagues where they're pay had been converted into crypto, started started panicking, and that was a catalyst for them getting out and jumping ship. But yeah, if crypto looked like a safe bet again, suddenly these jobs could look really, really appealing. Yeah.

And I've seen a lot of people on Twitter, for example, sharing bitcoin versus the pound, you know, the territory that way in at the moment um. And yeah, it might sound flippant, but I guess these are calculations that people will be making. Yeah, I don't know what's scary being paid in the in the bitcoin now being painted in sterling at the moment true. Okay, let's go back and start crying all in a corner here and none. All right, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much.

That yeah, yeah, yeah. You can find more of will and I is reporting on the Bloomberg terminal on Bloomberg dot com and on Twitter at Sagani at A I S H A G A and I and at William Shaw five or six. That's at W I L L I A M S H A W five four six. I'm an ere Bloomberg Senior crypto editor on the next

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