In another round of layoffs, Blockchain.com will be sending home 110 employees who make up 28% of their workforce.
The move marks the second major layoff by the company. In July 2022, the company sent home 25% of its employees, citing a brutal bear market. Top executives also received salary cuts, offering disengaged staff a 4 – 12 weeks benefit package.
According to an email by the company’s representative to Coindesk, the company was reacting to the significant headwinds they faced in 2022. They decided to reduce operating costs and finetune their product offerings to customers.
The company now has 280 employees, and all affected employees would receive benefit packages that vary depending on their country.
Blockchain.com is a crypto financial service company that heralded the first BTC explorer in 2011. The company later created a crypto wallet that accounted for 28% of all BTC transactions between 2012 and 2020.
Crypto layoff season
The crypto winter of 2022 caused a tight liquidity crunch which is now spilling into 2023.
Coinbase earlier this week made a similar layoff move sending home 950 employees.
According to Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Amstrong, they attribute layoffs to the bull run of 2021, which made the company grow ‘too fast.’ He shared that they should have done more in hindsight. Due to the current market condition, the company would revert to its earlier start-up culture with small teams that moved quickly.
ConsenSys, the company behind the Metamask crypto wallet, is also planning to reduce its staff headcount by 100. The company, based in New York, has about 900 employees; according to sources familiar with the matter, the company was finalizing the plan.
SuperRare NFT marketplace reduced its staff by 30% this month. According to its CEO, John Crain, the company had to correct this since it had overhired staff during the 2020-2021 NFT boom. He added that the extended crypto winter added to their shortcomings.
On January 5th, crypto exchange Huobi, lender Genesis Global and Silvergate Capital announced layoffs upwards of 20%.
Justin Sun had earlier denied the move by Huobi to cut off 20% of its workforce, but the exchange’s spokesperson later confirmed it.
Earlier allegations had indicated that staff was getting paid in stablecoins and that there was poor internal communication. According to the spokesperson, the company would maintain a ‘very lean team’ going forward. Following the news, the exchanges HT token fell 11% in 24 hours.
After sharing a letter with its clients on ‘reducing costs and driving efficiencies,’ crypto lender Genesis laid off 145 employees accounting for 30% of its workforce. Genesis Capital is a subsidiary of DCG, which is facing multiple lawsuits related to ‘failed agreements and liquidity pressures.’ Famous crypto news outlet Coindesk is also a subsidiary of DCG.
According to a US SEC filing, SIlverbank saw an outflow of $8.1 billion in crypto deposits in the last quarter of 2022 and slashed 40% of its workforce to reduce operating costs.
“In response to the rapid changes in the crypto asset industry during the fourth quarter, we took commensurate steps to ensure that we were maintaining cash liquidity to satisfy potential deposit outflows, and we currently maintain a cash position in excess of our crypto asset-related deposits,” said Silvergate CEO Alan Lane.
Silvergate also halted plans to launch a cryptocurrency and wrote off the $196 million related to the acquisition of Diem. Diem, formerly Libra, was Facebook’s campaign to lunch a USD stablecoin.
The year 2023 started positively, with multiple coins, like SOL and Gala, making impressive gains. At press time, BTC was trading at $18,194, up 5% in the last 24 hours. The market’s performance in 2023 will be pivotal to many crypto companies’ continued performance.
