UK fintech unicorn Revolut on hiring spree for digital assets division
At a time when massive redundancies have hit the tech industry as start-up funding slows, Britain’s biggest unicorn is bucking the trend and going on a hiring spree. Revolut is increasing its headcount by 20%, including in its digital assets division, which has continued to grow despite the overall market slowdown.
Revolut, which started as a currency exchange and payments company before expanding into other financial services, will hire in Europe and the US over the next six months, Bloomberg reports. The appointment comes at a time when many of the world’s largest startups have laid off thousands of employees or announced a hiring freeze. Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA ), TikTok, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX ), Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR ), Shopify and more have all announced layoffs. Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), BlockFi, Gemini, Crypto.com, Bitpanda,
Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD ), and others have laid off thousands of workers in the digital asset industry.
Revolut is the outlier. So far this year, it has employed 43 people in the digital assets division, tripling the number of employees from last year. And it’s not about to stop, with Bloomberg reporting that it’s currently advertising for blockchain-related roles in compliance and financial crime prevention, software development and the legal sector.
Emil Urmanshin, the fintech’s general manager of digital assets, says the company will continue to hire, telling the outlet that they “view crypto as a long-term play and remain positive on the crypto industry.”
He further revealed that digital assets account for 5%-10% of the company’s revenue. According to figures it released a year ago, the company generated $361 million in revenue in 2020, with $54 million coming from its digital assets division. At the time, it had digital assets on its balance sheet, but has since liquidated them.
And while the other financial services were affected during the pandemic, the business with digital assets increased. Urmanshin revealed that the number of UK clients trading these assets increased by 290% between July 2020 and July 2021. Their trading volume increased by over 800%.
As soon as the restrictions were eased, business slowed down, but even then, Revolut still recorded a 30% increase between July 2021 and July 2022.
“Although there has been turmoil, interest in crypto assets has increased and we still have more customers trading crypto than in July 2021,” commented Urmanshin.
While the digital asset business continues to grow, Revolut has yet to obtain a license from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It is currently on the FCA’s provisional register, the only firm still on this list from the 11 that had applied for a VASP licence. The other 10 have either been granted a license or refused.
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