Cryptocurrency trading platform Blockchain.com is reportedly cutting 28% of its workforce.
The company told CoinDesk in an email published Thursday (January 12): “We have made the difficult decision to reduce operating costs and headcount to right-size the company in order to better balance product offerings and demand.”
PYMNTS has reached out to Blockchain.com for comment but has not received a response.
These job cuts, which affect 110 employees, follow a previous layoff that laid off 150 employees last June.
These layoffs are against Three Arrows Capital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund with an estimated $10 billion in assets that has made some very risky bets on decentralized financial projects like the Terra/LUNA algorithmic stablecoin. following a loss of $270 million from
In October, there were reports that Blockchain.com was considering a “down round” of funding that would take the company’s value from the $14 billion it reached in early 2022.
Blockchain.com’s job cuts come days after cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced it would cut 20% of its staff as the industry continues to suffer from a long “winter.”
“As we looked at the 2023 scenarios, it became clear that we needed to cut costs to increase our chances of success in all scenarios,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said this week. Initially, he told employees when the company implemented its third cut.
“It’s always hard to say goodbye to a colleague, but there was no way we could cut costs significantly without considering a change in personnel.”
Other crypto companies are laying off staff, including crypto lender Genesis, which has laid off 30% of its workforce and is reportedly considering bankruptcy, and exchange Kraken.
According to CoinDesk, the layoffs have left Blockchain.com with 280 employees, up from 160 staff members in early 2021. Laid off employees receive severance pay.
The outlier among them is Binance, the industry’s largest exchange, which this week plans to increase staff by 15% to 30% this year after hiring about 5,000 employees in 2022. said it is.
At an industry conference on Wednesday (January 11), CEO Changpeng Zhao said:
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