Despite the economic downturn induced by the coronavirus pandemic, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell predicts that Bitcoin (BTC) and the crypto industry as a whole will perform well in the months ahead.
In an interview with Forbes, Powell reveals that while many companies are laying off workers, the San Francisco-based exchange is increasing its staff by nearly 10% due to an uptick in interest in the cryptocurrency market at large ever since the coronavirus surfaced in China.
“We saw once the news really started to break that we were getting a lot of new signups.
It’s kind of been a bit of a ramp up just over the last few weeks. Every day [we’re seeing] more sign-ups, more verification requests, more people funding their accounts, and that to us is a signal that things are heating up, that we need to start adding more staff.”
Powell says that both the cryptocurrency and traditional markets have their share of retail investors who make trades on a whim, and that Bitcoin has remained relatively stable, with the king coin rebounding by 30% plus last week.
“If you’ve been living in Bitcoin for any amount of time, you’re used to this level of volatility. You just live your life on the roller coaster, and what’s happening in Bitcoin now is not that extreme for Bitcoin.
What’s happening to the rest of the world, that seems very extreme by comparison.”
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