FINRA CEO welcomes crypto employees who were laid off as agency increases focus on digital assets

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Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) CEO Robert Cook talked about the agency’s direction towards the crypto market to understand and monitor cryptocurrencies and said that people recently laid off from crypto companies were welcome to join FINRA, Reuters reported June 14.

FINRA is a private company that’s acting as a self-regulatory organization to enforce rules that govern registered brokers to protect their integrity. The company already has clients that provide digital asset securities or access to crypto assets.

Since the U.S. government has been recently leaning into crypto regulations, Cook said FINRA would soon have an important role to play. Therefore, the agency is developing verification methods for digital assets and looking at the possibility of doing cross-market surveillance on various blockchains.

To move FINRA further down the crypto sphere, Cook said the agency would be hiring individuals with working crypto knowledge.

He said:

“We’re going to need to be engaged and prepared to have the resources to do that, so anybody who is getting laid off from a crypto platform and wants to work for FINRA, give me a call.”

Firing spree

So far, seven crypto companies have chosen to downsize and laid off some of their staff. All did so to survive the current market conditions.

Gemini was the first company who announced it was cutting headcount by 10% on June 2, 2022. Coinbase followed Gemini two days later by un-hiring new recruits.

BlockFi, Crypto.com, Robinhood, Bitso, and Bitmex announced similar decisions within a few days. While Crypto.com laid off around 5% of its staff, BlockFi and Bitmex laid off up to 20% and 25%, respectively.

The crypto community reacts to the layoffs and says firing should be the last choice. A Twitter user posted the percentage gains of board members from each company that chose to fire its staff and said they should cut their percentage instead of downsizing.

Boards of these companies should take pay cuts instead of doing layoffs🤦‍♂️

-Cryptocom: 3.5%
-Robinhood: 6%
-Bitso: 7%
-Coinbase: 9-12%
-Blockfi: 15%
-Bitmex: 15-19%

Percentages spread between all board members or 🤡s

— TucknCrypto🏆 (@TucknCrypto) June 14, 2022

Hiring companies

Binance and Ripple don’t seem to be affected by the crypto winter as much as their competitors. Both companies are currently hiring individuals with crypto knowledge in addition to FINRA.

Binance especially stressed how well it is doing. Based on its treasury, the company will leverage the crypto winter by increasing mergers and acquisitions.