Binance Unveils Plan to Hire 1,000 Employees This Year, Prioritizing Compliance Amid Regulatory Pressure

August 24, 2024 Bitcoin.com

Ava Labs cuts 12% of staff to ‘reallocate resources’ toward expansion

November 7, 2023 Coin Telegraph

AVA Labs

Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer however stressed the firm is well-positioned with significant runway and resources at its disposal.

Ava Labs, the team behind the Avalanche Blockchain, has confirmed it laid off 12% of its employees in a recent wave of staff cuts, citing the need to reallocate its resources.

The firm’s founder and CEO Emin Gün Sirer confirmed the news on Nov. 7 after several former Ava Labs employees announced on X (formerly Twitter) they had been laid off.

“This reduction in force affected 12% of Ava Labs, and allows us to reallocate resources to double down on the growth of our firm and the Avalanche ecosystem,” Gün Sirer said.

Gün Sirer acknowledged that bear markets can be tough to navigate but iterated Ava Labs is well-positioned with significant runway and resources at its disposal.

Today we parted ways with some of our Ava Labs team members. We are no longer a 12 person startup, but we strive to capture the speed and energy of a small, nimble team.

This reduction in force affected 12% of Ava Labs, and allows us to reallocate resources to double down on the…
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) November 7, 2023

Ava Labs has 335 employees, according to LinkedIn, which suggests around 40 people were impacted.

Ava Labs vice president of growth and strategy Garrison Yang hinted that many of the layoffs came from the firm’s marketing team.

In an Oct. 6 post on X, former game growth marketing team-member Zach Manafort was among those revealing he was laid off. His departure comes despite being active in the Avalanche community since 2020.

It looks like my time at @AvaLabs has come to its end. Despite the recent layoffs, my time here has been filled with invaluable experiences and growth.

As I transition forward, I am open to explore opportunities in marketing or operations.

My passion for these fields combined…
— Trading Aloha (@TradingAloha) November 6, 2023

The layoffs came as a surprise to Manafort who thought “things were just getting started.”

Brandon Suzuki, who also previously worked in Ava Labs’ marketing unit, similar confirmed that he was laid off on Oct. 6.

Unfortuantely, I was let go from @AvaLabs this morning. If anyone has resources for web3 marketers, please let me know!
— Brandon Suzuki (@BrandonSuzuki_) November 6, 2023

The most recent round of layoffs comes only days after a 50% staff cut by nonfungible token marketplace OpenSea on Nov. 3.

Neil Dundon, founder of CryptoRecruit, told Cointelegraph that job openings are still hard to come by in the crypto industry, despite a recent uptick in crypto market cap.

“The Crypto market is still very tough unfortunately right now. Money is tight. VC has dried up.”

Dundon said there needs to be more signs pointing to a bull market before there’s any meaningful uptick in hiring again.

“This is how it has always behaved and it’s no different this time around.”

On the other hand, Kevin Gibson and Daniel Adler, the founders of Proof of Search and Cryptocurrency Jobs, both told Cointelegraph that they have seen a slight increase in hiring over the last few weeks.

Gibson attributed this to cryptocurrency firms acting under the impression that they may lose out on the talent pool when market conditions improve in 2024. He added:

“It is still an employer's market so we are encouraging companies to take advantage of this to keep building as it will be very different in 2024.”

Gibson noted that some of these positions were only 2-3 day per week roles as opposed to full-time positions.

Adler shared a similar sentiment:

“As we're approaching the end of the year, teams are doing a final hiring push and following through on their hiring plans and roadmap.”

Magazine: How to protect your crypto in a volatile market — Bitcoin OGs and experts weigh in

Over half of Americans fear ‘major impact’ by AI on workers: Survey

April 21, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bias

More respondents said AI will “hurt” American workers more than it will “help” them over the next 20 years.

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of Americans think implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace will have a “major impact” on American workers within the next 20 years, leaving many employees “wary” and “worried” about what their future holds.

An April 20 Pew Research report found 56% of the 11,004 adults surveyed in the United States said AI will have a major impact on the U.S. economy too. Another 22% believed AI will impact the economy to a minor degree.

Only 13% of participants believed “AI will help more than hurt” American workers, whereas 32% thought the opposite. The rest of the participants predicted “AI will equally help and hurt” American employees (32%) or were unsure (22%).

While 62% of Americans believe AI will have a major impact on workers generally, just 28% believe its use in the workplace will have a major effect on them personally. https://t.co/ExpDNlOsWl pic.twitter.com/biMSX1AUln
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) April 20, 2023

The study didn’t directly ask participants whether they thought they would lose employment to AI but many respondents cited worry that an AI-enabled workplace would lead to increased surveillance, data mismanagement and misinterpretations.

Pew Research said there is a “consensus” that many American workers feel like they would be watched “Big Brother” style, with 81% citing the concern.

71% of respondents said they oppose the idea of AI being used to help make a final decision in the hiring process.

Nearly two-thirds said they would be most bothered by AI tracking their minute-to-minute movements, and around half cited potential frustrations around an AI keeping track of how many hours they’re at their desk and recording exactly what they’re working on.

*For every participant that was in favor of AI being used in the hiring process, 10 opposed it. Source: Pew Research*

Just under 40% cited concern that AI would be used to evaluate their performance.

Despite the mixed views on what AI would offer to the workforce, two-thirds of respondents said they wouldn’t want to apply for a job where AI was used to make hiring decisions.

One surveyed man in his 60s explained that AI shouldn’t be used for that purpose because it can’t judge character:

“AI can’t factor in the unquantifiable intangibles that make someone a good co-worker ... or a bad co-worker. Personality traits like patience, compassion and kindness would be overlooked or undervalued.”

“It’s a ‘garbage in, garbage out’ problem,” another surveyed woman explained.

Not everyone agreed though as a man in his 50s explained AI has the potential to fill the shoes of a hiring manager:

“I think the AI would be able to evaluate all my skills and experience in their entirety where a human may focus just on what the job requires. The AI would see beyond the present and see my potential over time.”

Just under half of the participants said AI would treat all applicants in the same way “better” than what hiring managers do, while 15% said AI would be “worse.” Under 15% said the treatment would be “about the same.”

Those surveyed who claimed AI would lead to “better” treatment explained the technology would help circumvent biases and discrimination based on age, gender and race.

Others believed AI may reinforce the same prejudices that companies are trying to eradicate.

The motivation to carry out the study was partly prompted by what Pew Research describes as the “rapid rise of ChatGPT” — an AI chatbot released by OpenAI on Nov. 30.

Magazine: NFT Creator, Emily Xie: Creating ‘organic’ generative art from robotic algorithms

Binance Looking to Hire Developers, Support Staff in Romania

February 24, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Nifty News: Bitcoin NFTs cause spicy fees, Mastercard exec tokenizes resignation letter and more

February 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin NFTs

Users are posting massive files to the Bitcoin network via the Ordinals protocol, taking up block space and paying high fees to do so.

Bitcoin Ordinals causes fees to spike

The Bitcoin (BTC)-native Ordinals protocol is taking up record-breaking space on the blockchain and in the process is hiking the transaction fees on the network.

The divisive newly launched protocol allows for nonfungible token (NFT)-esque assets on the Bitcoin mainnet by inscribing satoshis with content.

So far, inscriptions have included content such as images, documents including a PDF file of the Bitcoin whitepaper and even a fully playable clone of the video game DOOM.

*The 31.2 kilobyte DOOM clone (pictured) will now forever be playable on Bitcoin. Image:* *Ordinals*

On Feb. 2, independent developer, Udi Wertheimer, tweeted he had conducted the “largest transaction in Bitcoin’s history” after using the Ordinals protocol to inscribe a 3.94-megabyte image of a sunglass-wearing, bald, bearded wizard lauding “magic internet JPEGs.”

Last night, we made history

The gatekeepers tried to censor us

But we mined the LARGEST BLOCK and LARGEST TRANSACTION IN BITCOIN’S HISTORY

Special thanks to bitcoin full node operators for supporting our efforts and hosting our 4MB NFT for all eternity!

gm @TaprootWizards ‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/uKGG918af8
— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) February 2, 2023

The data size of these inscribed transactions are much more than those typically conducted on the blockchain and as a result have driven up the fees associated with processing them.

Typical Bitcoin transactions can cost a few cents to a few dollars, but Ordinals can cost tens of dollars in comparison.

Figures from crypto-mining data provider Hashrate Index show over the past seven days fees as a percentage of the block reward are on the rise starting off the week at around 1% before jumping to a Feb. 1 weekly high of 6.74%.

Mastercard’s NFT lead quits on bad terms, sells resignation letter as NFT

The now-former NFT product lead at payments giant Mastercard left the company in a spectacular fashion, publicly slamming the firm for purportedly mistreating him and offering up his resignation letter as an NFT.

In a Feb. 2 Twitter thread, Satvik Sethi claimed Mastercard cut his salary by 40% when he moved from New York City to London claiming he “had to work side jobs this past year to make ends meet.”

I have resigned from @Mastercard.

For the past year, I served as the ‘NFT Product Lead.’ I evangelized Web3 for Mastercard leadership & regional teams, as well as all our Fortune 500 clients & partners.

This wasn’t easy but read on for why it was necessary, and what’s next : pic.twitter.com/kqiavsSIW7
— Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 2, 2023

He claimed that at times he would not receive his salary “until I begged across the hierarchy for it.”

Sethi also alleged he was the victim of harassment “caused by a series of mismanaged processes, miscommunication [and] internal inefficiency.”

He asked his over 22,000 Twitter followers for their support by minting his resignation letter for 0.023 Ether (ETH), worth around $37.

“100% of this goes to survival,” Sethi added as he will lose his British work visa and would “be based in India for the foreseeable future.” A future airdrop of art for holders of the NFT was also promised by Sethi.

At the time of writing 53 NFTs of the letter, which Sethi titled “New Beginnings” had been minted.

Cointelegraph contacted Mastercard for comment regarding Sethi’s allegations but did not immediately receive a response.

eBay eyes talent for its acquired NFT marketplace

E-commerce player eBay is looking to hire several Web3-related roles for its United Kingdom-based NFT marketplace KnownOrigin which it acquired in June 2022.

Job postings by eBay on LinkedIn revealed its hiring for positions in the U.K. and at its headquarters in California.

Among the roles are a Manchester-based Head of Community for KnownOrigin along with a Content Designer and Marketing Campaign Executive for the marketplace amongst other positions.

The firm is also hiring two California-based positions for a Crypto Counsel. The job description says the role will see a “creative crypto attorney” joining eBay’s legal team to support its “business, product, compliance and technology teams in the Web3 space.”

OpenSea rolls out suite of tools for NFT creators

NFT marketplace OpenSea released the next series of tools for its “Drops” feature which is used to help creators launch NFT collections with OpenSea to benefit from its reach.

In a Feb. 2 Twitter thread, OpenSea said it had worked closely with 20 teams to “build a best-in-class drops experience.”

We’re excited to start rolling out the next phase ofDrops on OpenSeaa product we’ve been working on for the past few months! https://t.co/rRydH289Vq ⬇️
— OpenSea (@opensea) February 2, 2023

The next phase of the rollout includes giving creators tools allowing them to conduct multi-stage minting, smart contract deployment across multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains and personalize web landing pages among other features.

The tool will be “gradually opening up” to select creators “over the coming weeks” according to OpenSea.

It will also add more features in the coming weeks before it’s released to the public at large.

OpenSea has experimented with its Drops feature by creating personalized pages for select collections, most notably, one was created for the debut collection by actor Sir Anthony Hopkins which ended up selling out in under 10 minutes.

Other Nifty News:

Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said there are “various possibilities for using Web3” in the country, and the government may use NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to promote its “Cool Japan” strategy aiming to show off the nation's tech and culture.

Cointelegraph spoke with industry professionals on how to prevent NFT thefts who advised users to take due diligence, revoke unnecessary permissions and segregate NFTs into different wallets among other measures.

Asset Management Giant Fidelity Doubles Down on Crypto With Hiring Spree of 100 Employees: Report

October 24, 2022 The Daily Hodl

Scaling Solution Polygon Plans To Aggressively Expand by Hiring 200 People in Coming Months: Report

September 11, 2022 The Daily Hodl

Meta to Slow Hiring in 2022, Hints at Layoffs After Metaverse Pivot

July 5, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Kraken reiterates hiring targets as CEO denounces ‘woke activists’ in corporate culture

June 15, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

"We recognize that hurt feelings are inevitable in a global organization that is optimizing for team outcomes above individual sentiment," said the team at Kraken.

On Wednesday, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced that it would continue to hire over 500 roles in various departments amid a market downturn . The company's hiring efforts are in stark contrast to a week of severe layoff announcements from major blockchain firms such as Coinbase, BlockFi, etc. In support of the decision to expand its staff, Kraken said:

"We have not adjusted our hiring plan, and we do not intend to make any layoffs. We have over 500 roles to fill during the remainder of the year and believe bear markets are fantastic at weeding out the applicants chasing hype from the true believers in our mission."

However, Jesse Powell, Kraken's CEO, also expressed critical remarks over a small subset of employees at Kraken, estimated to be 20 out of 3,200 people. As told by Powell:

"I think we've developed some really thoughtful policies that might not appease woke activists but work for the other 99% of the world."

Powell explained that the said employees possessed great talent, but were not a fit for the company as they were accused of focusing on "minor sights" and "first world problems" instead of the company's stated mission of bringing financial inclusion to billions of people around the world. "Most people don't care and just want to work," said Powell when addressing the various social topics raised by the said subset of employees.

As the year progressed, the cryptocurrency exchange became known for its frank and honest approach to everyday operations. In April, Powell made the decision to close down Kraken's San Francisco headquarters, citing rampant crime in the area and specifically named the city's District Attorney Chesa Boudin as being responsible.

11/11 We're going to keep building and hopefully do a better job of filtering up front. I think we've developed some really thoughtful policies that might not appease woke activists but work for the other 99% of the world. If that sounds nice, check out: https://t.co/Zfjjg43lnV
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022

Argentinian Cryptocurrency Exchange Buenbit Announces Staff Layoffs

May 25, 2022 Bitcoin.com

hiring

Bitcoin Ordinals causes fees to spike

Mastercard’s NFT lead quits on bad terms, sells resignation letter as NFT

eBay eyes talent for its acquired NFT marketplace

OpenSea rolls out suite of tools for NFT creators

Other Nifty News:

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