Brian Armstrong
Crypto recruitment execs reveal the safest jobs amid layoff season
Despite a wave of heavy crypto layoffs to start the new year, employees in technical and engineering roles, as well as senior management, will likely continue to see “strong demand” for their skills, recruitment professionals believe. It’s been a tough first few weeks of 2023 for crypto businesses and their staff. Within just two weeks, the market has already seen more than 1,600 crypto-related job cuts as a result of continued market volatility and uncertainty. However, not all departments have seen the same level of cuts. SAFU: Senior-level tech and engineering Rob Paone, founder and CEO of crypto recruitment firm Proof of Talent, told Cointelegraph that technical and engineering roles are by a “wide margin” the most in-demand jobs, even during bear markets. He said his ...
Santas and Grinches: The heroes and villains of 2022
From an outside perspective, 2022 has been a rollercoaster ride for crypto. The market reached a total valuation of $3 trillion during the bull market of 2021, only to scale back to its current level of around $810 billion. While this poor performance can be partly attributed to the pervading macroeconomic environment — compounded by rising inflation rates and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, among other factors — one cannot deny the role that the recent slew of insolvencies has had on the sector. That said, below is a list of arguably the most notable heroes and villains who have undeniably impacted this rapidly evolving industry over the past year. The heroes Changpeng Zhao At a time when some of the biggest players in crypto crumbled, Changpeng Zhao, also known as “CZ,” ensure...
Buterin and Armstrong reflect on proof-of-stake shift as Ethereum Merge nears
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believe that a gradual mind shift and important community contributions led to their backing of Ethereum’s upcoming move from a proof-of-work (PoW) to aproof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. The two industry titans joined Coinbase protocol specialist Viktor Bunin on the Around the Block podcast for an enlightening discussion centered on The Merge, which is set to take place in mid-September 2022. Buterin reflected on his history of considering proof-of-stake as a potential consensus mechanism for the Ethereum blockchain, which was initially met with skepticism due to a number of unsolved problems that made it seemingly unviable. According to the Ethereum co-founder, one of the project’s first blog posts in 2014 proposed an...
Coinbase would rather shut down staking than enable on-chain censorship — Brian Armstrong
In light of the recent ban on crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash and the subsequent arrest of the Tornado Cash developer, there has been a growing debate over whether crypto services providers would choose decentralization or censorship as form of compliance. The question has become more prominent as Ethereum is moving from its current proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mining consensus. With the transition less than a month away, a user pointed out that more than 66% of validators on the Beacon Chain (Ethereum PoS chain) will adhere to the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations. Start with the big, current one. Currently it looks like over 66% of the beacon chain validators will adhere to OFAC regulatio...
Why Coinbase is banning slide decks and ‘endless meetings’
Crypto exchange Coinbase is getting rid of slide decks and “endless meetings” as a way to improve productivity following the purge of roughly 18% of employees last month. In a July 13 blog post, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted that the company is currently focused on “driving more efficiency” as it continues to scale, pointing to a 200% year-on-year employee growth over 18 months that had started to put a strain on the firm’s organizational structure. He suggested that many major firms experiencing rapid growth generally end up becoming complacent and slowing down, while great companies do the opposite: “While this trajectory is natural, it is not inevitable. Every great company, from Amazon to Meta to Tesla, found ways to retain their founding energy in conjunction with appropriate con...
