When you start working, your cultural temperament is shaped by your company.
Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
When I was young, I often heard adults describe someone as "cultured."
Curiously, I asked, what does it mean to be cultured?
The adults told me that it is a kind of temperament that cannot be described but can be felt, and I would understand it when I grow up and start working.
After I started working, I received a "corporate culture" manual. As someone who doesn't love reading, I finally began to sense the culture.
After all, when you start working, your cultural temperament is shaped by your company.
When a person is full of phrases like "penetrating the mind, closed-loop, retrospective, empowerment, leverage, benchmarking, precipitation…," "Dude, you're from Alibaba," and if he also says, "You're a newcomer, you should sacrifice for the team, how about 3.25 this year," then it's probably P8.
If a veteran in the coin circle shares with you the clever trick of how to use company resources for personal gain, you might also smile knowingly, "Dude, you've been at Pionex, right?"
Corporate culture is like a company's underwear. It may seem irrelevant most of the time, and outsiders can't see it anyway, but it must exist, otherwise it's easy to be exposed.
Some say that corporate culture is how the boss wants employees to behave, commonly known as PUA.
True corporate culture should be a set of values that everyone in the company agrees with, just like a group of like-minded friends, drinking passionately for the company's mission until late at night—even though they might regret it the next day, at least they were passionate.
We can easily recall the corporate cultures of some well-known internet companies, such as Tencent's "Be a respected company" and Google's "Don't be evil." But what do you know about the corporate culture of companies in the cryptocurrency industry?
This article compares the corporate cultures of the world's top five cryptocurrency exchanges, each with its own strengths. Which one is your favorite?
Coinbase: Pursuing victory like an NBA team
The long-established cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has always emphasized corporate culture building. Its mission is to promote economic freedom in the world and create an open financial system.
Coinbase often compares the team to a basketball team. One of its cultural principles is to play like a championship team, so it requires:
Company first: As #OneCoinbase, the company's goals take precedence over any specific team or individual goals.
Act for a greater mission: Unite and work hard to accomplish things that none of us can do alone.
Default trust: We assume goodwill among teammates, assuming ignorance over malice. We support each other.
Focus on commonalities, not differences: We focus on our commonalities rather than our differences, creating cohesion and a sense of unity.
Sustained high performance: Unlike a family, everyone is involved regardless of performance, and championship teams work together to raise talent standards, including replacing team members when necessary.
Corporate mission: Promote economic freedom in the world.
Coinbase's top ten corporate culture guidelines:
Smooth communication: Communicate directly and succinctly, efficiently share information, and improve collaboration and productivity.
Efficient execution: Action-oriented, quickly complete high-quality work, and advocate achieving 80% of the results with 20% of the effort.
Act like an owner: Actively work to improve all aspects of the company, even on issues unrelated to work.
Continuous learning: Value learning, be open to giving and receiving candid feedback, and see every setback as a learning opportunity.
Attract top talent: Committed to attracting top talent, and for underperforming employees, Coinbase will provide a generous severance package.
Build the strongest team: It requires a successful team, not a warm and loving family atmosphere. We have high expectations for performance and delivering results.
Customer-centric: Focus on solving customer problems with technology, and become the most convenient, reliable, and secure platform.
Continuous innovation: Use technology to improve the world. Coinbase can tolerate failure and invest 10% of resources in risky projects.
Positive energy: Maintain an optimistic attitude towards the future, and when faced with difficulties, focus on solving problems rather than blaming others.
Mission first: Do not engage in social or political activities unrelated to the mission during work, and strive to make the workplace a refuge from division, focusing on advancing the mission.
Throughout the article, although the expression is very subtle, it can be seen that Coinbase's corporate culture reveals two hidden points:
The company is not a family, and Coinbase only wants excellent employees. Those with mediocre performance will be let go. Coinbase's corporate culture still has a competitive edge.
Coinbase emphasizes seeking common ground while reserving differences, and emphasizes not engaging in social and political activities. Previously, Coinbase had been accused by employees of gender and racial discrimination, so related social and political issues are areas that Coinbase avoids touching. Political correctness is becoming more and more of a straitjacket for American companies.
Binance: Committed to achieving currency freedom, recruiting hardcore employees
As the industry's largest trading platform, Binance has always been the subject of study for many people, especially on how to effectively manage cross-cultural teams in remote work situations.
In the official article "How Binance Efficiently Manages Remote Teams," it mentions two points: establishing corporate values conducive to remote work and cultivating a culture of continuous communication.
In an interview with the media in July this year, Binance co-founder He Yi also mentioned that one of the good things about Binance over the past 7 years is that Binance's corporate culture is very solid.
Binance's corporate values can be summarized in a sentence by CZ: "We regard cryptocurrency as a fundamental means to enhance currency freedom. Therefore, we strive to promote cryptocurrency to circulate worldwide. Every product and service of Binance contributes to this goal, and user-centricity is our key driver."
Vision: Binance is committed to increasing global currency freedom and believes that by spreading this freedom, it can significantly improve the lives of people around the world. People should have the freedom to access, use, own, store, and earn currency.
Mission: Binance's mission is to provide core infrastructure services for cryptocurrencies.
Core values:
User-centric: Users and the community are the reason for Binance's existence. Their work is to serve and protect users, prioritizing user interests.
Freedom: Responsibly execute and work autonomously, empower those around them, have a diverse team, and challenge the status quo.
Collaboration: Open communication, teamwork, common goals, and building an ecosystem together.
Hardcore: Focus on results, complete tasks, work passionately, work hard, learn quickly after failure, and stand up again.
Humility: Accept criticism and feedback, treat everyone equally, and remain humble in success.
Code of conduct:
Effective communication: concise verbal and written communication, direct and honest, no "sugar-coating" or selective reporting, clear requests, and providing sufficient background.
Maintain enthusiasm: be passionate about the industry and important work, be proactive, and be driven by the mission rather than money.
Continuous learning: be an early adopter, continuously learn, and adapt to this emerging and dynamic industry.
Respect others' time: be punctual and prepared, pay attention to details (such as muting and preparing the camera) to show respect.
Cultivate strong leadership: build a lean team, guide and mentor, have a strong bench, continue learning, and lead by example.
Understand company strategy: understand the big picture, cultivate a keen sense of business and industry, develop good judgment, prioritize the team, and focus on execution.
Develop a grassroots mindset: stay close to the community, maintain authenticity, rely on social media rather than traditional media.
Show thorough honesty: speak candidly, provide comprehensive data, focus on issues rather than individuals, accept direct feedback, and do not avoid addressing issues.
From the above, not only can we see the values advocated by Binance, but also glimpse its style of doing things. It can be summarized as pursuing direct point-to-point communication, advocating connecting with users through social media rather than traditional media, and using its own platform to voice opinions rather than third-party channels. Therefore, we can also see that CZ and He Yi frequently communicate directly with users on social media. Internally, Binance also maintains a flat communication style. Many Binance employees have stated that they have received late-night calls from CZ to discuss work matters.
Bitget: The Huawei of the cryptocurrency industry, let the results speak for you
When it comes to wolf culture, we have to mention a Chinese company, Huawei.
Huawei's corporate culture and management philosophy have long been admired by many cryptocurrency bosses, such as Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, who has a "Huawei faith" and has not only studied Huawei comprehensively but has also poached employees from Huawei multiple times.
Although Huawei's wolf culture has been controversial, it cannot be denied that Huawei's management and culture have taken "pragmatism" and "efficiency" to the extreme.
In any industry, once Huawei enters as a competitor, everyone in that industry will be restless, and the industry will face reshuffling.
Since Huawei and Seres jointly launched Wanjie, the best-selling new force in the automotive industry, Ideanomics has made it clear that it wants to learn from Huawei in terms of organization, research and development, and management. Its founder Li Xiang has called on every executive to buy at least 10 books about Huawei for study.
In the cryptocurrency industry, which company is most like Huawei?
A subjective view is—Bitget.
Bitget's wolf culture is well known in the industry, but most people have a superficial understanding of wolf culture.
According to a previous interview with Bitget CEO Gracy, in addition to a vision and mission, Bitget's corporate culture has four core values:
Vision: We believe that the crypto revolution will create a fairer future world.
Mission: We create ultimate trading products to make future finance accessible, safe, and efficient.
Core values:
User-centric: Always prioritize user needs.
Integrity and honesty: Zero tolerance for any form of dishonest behavior.
Open communication: Encourage team members to communicate directly and provide feedback on issues, rather than avoiding or reporting them.
Results-oriented: Emphasize a data-driven and results-oriented way of working.
This expression may seem abstract, but during Token2049, Bitget held nearly 10 events, which amazed people with the efficiency and execution of Bitget employees, making it the most prominent exchange during the 2049 period: signing with La Liga (Spanish football's top league LALIGA), surpassing 45 million global users, daily trading volume exceeding $10 billion, monthly visits exceeding 30 million, BGB outperforming BTC… These labels left a deep impression on attendees.
Based on the author's experience working with Bitget, Bitget's corporate culture has two main characteristics.
First, high expectations and daring to challenge the existing status quo.
This is quite similar to Huawei. When Huawei first entered the wireless business in the European market, Yu Chengdong once told the team that in the future, Huawei would become number one in the wireless field, surpassing Ericsson. At that time, most people inside the company "looked at Yu Chengdong like he was an idiot"; in 2012, Yu Chengdong said that Huawei would launch a flagship phone much more powerful than the iPhone 5, which drew ridicule from many. However, a powerful team can often turn the bragging into reality.
For example, when most people thought that the race for cryptocurrency wallets had reached its peak and the landscape was set, Bitget Wallet emerged.
In August of this year, Bitget Wallet App downloads reached 2 million, ranking first among global Web3 wallets, with over 12 million monthly active users (MAU).
Initially, the author doubted the authenticity of this data and privately asked a Bitget representative if they had inflated the numbers. The response was a firm denial, "absolutely not," and the representative stated that the "actual data is even higher" because the above data only counted two major app stores.
When asked for the reason, it was due to Bitget Wallet's early support for the TON mainnet's MPC wallet solution and collaborations with over 50 projects such as Catizen, Tomarket, and Notcoin. On-chain data showed that in August, Bitget Wallet contributed 17% of active addresses on the TON chain.
Second, delegation of authority and a results-oriented approach
After many companies grow, they often fall into a "political quagmire," with internal strife and factions causing the company to be consumed by internal conflicts. At Bitget, however, this problem seems not to exist because its corporate culture is "talk is cheap, let the results speak for you," and everyone is too busy to engage in internal conflicts. High expectations inevitably come with high pressure. However, Bitget also has a corresponding rule: "reward for merit, those who produce results will receive full authorization and rewards."
In summary, unlike other company cultures that may partially emphasize ideology, Bitget's corporate culture embodies pragmatism, being results-oriented, and eliminating those without results. Those with the ability and results receive rewards. It is simple and efficient. This seems to explain from a cultural perspective why Bitget's exchange and its ecosystem, including the wallet and investments, have made significant progress in the past year or two.
Kraken: The Ten Commandments, a must-read for cryptocurrency industry professionals
Before founding Kraken, Jesse Powell operated an electronic gaming virtual goods marketplace called Lewt, which was plagued by payment issues.
In 2011, when Jesse and his wife discovered Bitcoin, they sold Lewt and founded Kraken, believing that if they could promote the adoption of Bitcoin, it would improve the lives of billions of people.
Since its inception, Kraken has been imbued with founder Jesse's cyberpunk and libertarian values. However, like Coinbase, in an increasingly politicized America, Jesse was accused by American media of gender and racial discrimination.
After the public relations storm, Kraken released the corporate culture manifesto "Ten Taclemandments," or the ten commandments of Kraken, and encouraged those who did not fit the company's culture and values to resign with four months' salary.
The ten commandments of Kraken have also become a classic in the cryptocurrency corporate culture.
1. Crypto is for everyone
Bitcoin removes politics from money. This means that anyone can freely transact on the Bitcoin network as long as they can cryptographically prove control of their keys.
2. Must have a sense of mission and belief
At Kraken, our mission is to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrencies because we believe this will improve the lives of billions of people and usher in a new era of human prosperity.
3. Keep up with the pace of the cryptocurrency industry, or you will fall behind
Scouting and intelligence gathering are a key part of our strategy. Decentralized decision-making requires all of us to understand the situation.
4. Know yourself, know your enemy
Each customer-facing product should be familiar to every Kraken employee. If asked to describe or demonstrate any product used by our customers, no Kraken employee should hesitate.
5. Professional yet "at ease"
Kraken employees focus on results, which is why we value skills and knowledge over certificates and appearances. This is also why we work remotely in pajamas rather than wearing suits in the office.
6. Pursuit of life, freedom, and sound money
The crypto movement is rooted in the "dangerous" idea that all humans have basic rights: cryptographic technology, freedom of speech, free markets, choice of currency, open-source software, personal and financial privacy…
7. At times, you will be offended
If no one is offended, we either lack enough diversity of thought or enough communication transparency. If it always feels easy or comfortable, you may be doing it wrong. The ideal Kraken person should have thick skin and a kind heart.
8. Our mission is singular
We have no second mission, which means that when we encounter some problems, the only criterion for judgment is whether doing this will help us achieve our ultimate mission.
9. Global perspective drives true inclusivity
Recruitment should be based on performance, not just qualifications or perspectives. Diversity is not just about physical differences but also comes from the diversity of backgrounds and cultures from around the world. Silicon Valley's view of global diversity is a dangerous limitation and a commodification of individuals. We emphasize equal opportunities, regardless of background.
10. Key to being a Kraken person: the spirit of a knight
Bureaucracy must die, and we are determined to avoid the vicious cycle of meaningless talk and bureaucracy as the company grows. Therefore, we strive to maintain small teams, designate DRI (Directly Responsible Individual), and disdain office politics.
After the release of the Ten Taclemandments, it quickly gained traction, and the majority of people, both internally and in the cryptocurrency industry, stood by Jesse. Less than 1% of Kraken employees resigned, and due to the influence of the Ten Taclemandments, Kraken received a large number of job applications, which seems to indicate the importance of corporate culture.
It is not difficult to see that, similar to Coinbase, Kraken has been heavily influenced by ideology and political correctness. At such times, a clear and distinct corporate culture becomes particularly important, not only to attract like-minded employees but also to set a "warning sign" and tell some people not to come.
Upbit: Trust and Progress
A little-known fact: Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform in South Korea, is not a native cryptocurrency exchange, but one of the subsidiaries of a financial technology company.
In 2012, South Korea's financial technology company Dunamu Inc. was officially established and received investment from K Cube Ventures (now Kakao Ventures) the following year. In 2014, Dunamu launched the stock trading platform Stockplus. It wasn't until the second half of 2017, with the help of the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex, that Upbit was officially launched and is now the most valuable company under Dunamu.
Regarding Upbit's corporate culture, it is essentially Dunamu's corporate culture, which can be described as very fintech and not very crypto.
Dunamu's mission is: Connect & Unlock Value, creating new value by connecting different themes and winning customer trust with technology that benefits the world.
"We launched Stockplus because we believe the core of the securities market will shift from desktop to mobile. We are also confident in the evolution of blockchain and have launched Upbit, South Korea's first mobile app-based digital asset exchange. We are fortunate to accurately grasp the trend changes and continue to develop all value objects' transactions in a way that is convenient and simple for everyone. Now, we are further challenging our borderless technology expansion to unlock previously unimaginable value."
Dunamu has two core values:
Trust: Every person at Dunamu is an expert in their field. The trust of our customers in our services is our top priority, so we respect the opinions and decisions of our colleagues. Our horizontally communicative culture based on trust enables us to provide convenient and secure services.
Drive: Even though we are in a leading position, we still pursue faster progress. Once we focus on our goals, we can eliminate the fear of failure and seize opportunities to lead change. Customers are at the core of all our decisions. We always research, explore, and work for our customers. Our leaders make fast and accurate decisions based on horizontal communication.
Compared to platforms like Kraken that have detailed corporate cultures, Dunamu's corporate culture is very simple and direct, and does not particularly emphasize the vision of cryptocurrency and blockchain. They just want to do one thing: continuously progress and gain the trust of users.
Perhaps due to the financial industry background of its parent company, Upbit's internal management is exceptionally strict. For example, they strictly limit employees and their immediate family members from selling and exchanging cryptocurrencies on Upbit, and have established the Upbit Market Monitoring System (UMO). Every year, Dunamu releases a transparency report on the Upbit website.
In terms of listing, Upbit also maintains a very cautious and strict attitude, making the entire Upbit platform very mysterious within the industry.
In summary, Upbit is essentially a financial technology company that trades cryptocurrency assets, using the high standards of the financial industry to rigorously demand progress and extreme pursuit of user trust.
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