Fan token firm Chiliz boosts staff by 70% despite crypto winter
Fan token company Chiliz has continued to expand its workforce despite the ongoing bear market, reflecting a growing trend in the fan token sector.
The overall cryptocurrency market has seen a massive selloff in 2022, with the total market capitalization plunging 60% since the beginning of the year. Some major crypto companies, including Coinbase and Gemini, had to cut their workforce by 10%-20% to maintain operations and continue to serve their customers.
While a large number of crypto businesses have faced challenges amid the cryptocurrency winter, the fantoken industry seems to have shown some resilience.
Chiliz has increased the company’s workforce by over 70% this year as the firm continues to expand its global presence in 2022, Chiliz and Socios CEO Alexandre Dreyfus told Cointelegraph.
According to Dreyfus, Chiliz’s workforce now numbers more than 300 full-time employees operating from the new offices opened this year, including Miami, Switzerland, London, Milan and Sao Paulo. The firm has also hired new talent for offices in Madrid, Malta, Lyon and Istanbul.
“We’ve grown our team and our global presence very significantly,” Dreyfus said, adding that Chiliz has survived the previous big crypto winter. “We’ve been through market conditions similar to this in the past,” he stated, noting that the firm was founded in 2018.
Chiliz’s hiring spree reflects a growing trend in the fan token industry in 2022. According to data from industry data aggregator CryptoSlam, monthly volumes for global fan token sales increased by around 200% since early 2022, reaching around $6.4 billion in September . In January, these volumes amounted to $2.2 billion.
While fan token sales volume has been on the rise, the trend has been completely opposite for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to CryptoSlam data. Monthly volumes for global NFT sales shrank by 88% from $4.8 billion in January to $550 million in September 2022, while trading volumes fell by 98% since the beginning of the year.
Scalability could be one of the possible reasons behind the success of the fun token industry, according to Dreyfus. “Fan tokens are the only digital asset that can reasonably deliver the scalability to allow millions of users to access these communities,” he said.
Unlike NFTs, fan tokens are fungible digital assets, meaning they are fungible and each token has the same value at all times. Dreyfus stated:
“NFTs have been hailed for their many use cases, with the ability to form communities around token holders. The problem is that minting even a few thousand NFTs is a very expensive job.”
The CEO pointed out that fan tokens are not intended to beat NFTs, as these two types of tokens rather complement each other. Dreyfus also mentioned that Chiliz has a robust strategy around NFTs as they play an important role in the company’s vision, saying:
“It’s not about beating NFTs. Fan tokens are a product and NFTs are a technology, one that is an integral part of our product offering. They are one of the ways we reward fan token holders.”
Despite some developments in the NFT industry, Chiliz remains committed to fan tokens as the firm’s primary focus. “We are still at less than 1% of our potential,” Dreyfus added.
Related: Crypto.com cuts some sports partnership deals amid market downturn
Fan tokens are a type of cryptocurrency designed to provide community benefits to fans of sports teams, bands, and other groups. Chiliz platform and fan engagement platform Socios have established fan token partnerships with dozens of sports organizations worldwide, including FC Barcelona, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain and others.
In March 2022, Chiliz launched the testnet for its new layer-1 blockchain network Chiliz Chain 2.0, also known as CC2. The full CC2 launch is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2022.
