According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the issuer of USD Coin (USDC), Circle, intends to boost its employment by 15–25% in 2023 despite the widespread trend of layoffs throughout the sector.
Circle is going against the grain of the business landscape by increasing its headcount at a time when the majority of companies in its sector are reducing their workforces in an effort to improve their financial situations.
The bitcoin business was responsible for 41% of all job losses that occurred in 2023. Polygon, Chainalysis, Bittrex, Huobi, Crypto.com, Coinbase, Gemini, Genesis, and Wyre are a few examples of major cryptocurrency companies who have reduced their workforce by a large amount.
The protracted crypto winter and various crypto implosions, which wiped billions of dollars off the balance sheets of several connected firms, were important contributors to the decision made by cryptocurrency corporations to reduce their workforces. However, these massive layoffs in the cryptocurrency business were not an isolated event. In the month of January, almost 48,000 employees were let off amongst just four companies: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce.
After postponing the launch of Circle to the public for a few months, the company has decided to hire more people to work on the project. In December of 2022, Circle and Concord Acquisition came to an agreement to mutually cancel their intentions to go public together. Concord Acquisition is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The transaction was first reported to be worth 4.5 billion dollars back in July 2021, but it was then revised to be worth 9 billion dollars in February 2022 when Circle’s value increased significantly.
According to Jeremy Fox-Geen, Circle’s chief financial officer, the company has not abandoned its plans to go public; nevertheless, they are holding off until market circumstances improve. He went on to say that in order for public-market investors to reevaluate the prospects of companies dealing in digital assets, the cryptocurrency sector needs more time to pass after the collapses of Terra and FTX.
The stablecoin issuer had around 900 workers at the end of 2022, and there are plans to grow the number of staff by 135–225 in 2023. On the other hand, the expansion of the personnel is happening at a slower rate than it did in 2022, when the headcount more than doubled from 2021.
The USDC token, which is produced by Circle and presently has a market valuation of $42 billion, is the second biggest stablecoin behind Tether’s (USDT) token.