Polygon Labs lays off staff as Coinme acquisition nears close

Polygon Labs has cut jobs as it moves to complete its acquisition of crypto payments firm Coinme, its CEO, Marc Boiron, stated on X on Thursday, July 16.

Boiron wrote that the company is “in the final stages of completing the Coinme acquisition,” which folds Coinme’s team into Polygon Labs, and cast the acquisition as part of a reorganization meant to make the company profitable by 2027. 

The CEO tied the layoffs to their transformation from what he called “operating as a blockchain foundation into operating as a blockchain-enabled payments company.”

What did Polygon Labs’ CEO disclose?

The layoffs, according to Boiron, were difficult but necessary, as he stated, “These changes are about the company we’re building, not the quality of the people leaving. A blockchain foundation and a blockchain-enabled payments company do not operate the same way.”

He stated that the layoff is not a sign that the company is in distress, citing stable revenue, record stablecoin activity, a growing customer pipeline, and the rollout of the company’s on-chain payments product. 

Polygon Labs did not disclose how many employees were affected.

What is the progress on the Polygon-Coinme deal?

Polygon Labs signed agreements in January to buy Coinme and smart-wallet provider Sequence for more than $250 million, a combined bet on regulated stablecoin payments. 

Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal called the plan a “reverse Stripe” strategy and said Polygon Labs was “becoming a full-blown fintech company.”

Coinme brings licenses and a cash network to the deal. Founded in 2014, it launched the first licensed Bitcoin ATM in the United States and now operates across 48 states under money-transmitter licenses, with a retail footprint the company puts at more than 50,000 locations. 

In 2024, it passed $1 billion in transaction volume and turned a profit for the first time, according to a Coinme blog post announcing the acquisition. It will run as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Both Coinme and Sequence feed into Polygon’s Open Money Stack, a framework meant to move value from fiat bank accounts to on-chain settlement through a single interface. Polygon has said the acquisitions could add more than $100 million in annual revenue.

Usage is up, the token is not

The pivot toward payments has coincided with heavy network activity. Polygon logged 743 million transactions in the second quarter of 2026, an all-time high and a 160% jump from the same period a year earlier, Cryptopolitan reported in July. In May alone, the chain settled about $79.25 billion in stablecoin transfers.

That traffic has not reached the POL token. As of early July, POL traded near $0.073, down more than 94% from its March 2024 peak of $1.29, according to CoinMarketCap data cited by Cryptopolitan. The token has recovered slightly since, changing hands at around $0.084.