Bitcoin investment firm Valkyrie cuts staff

Investment company for digital assets Valkyrie Investments has reportedly cut around a third of its 23 staff over the past few weeks, joining many other companies in the sector who have done the same.

The two-year-old company said operations have continued without interruption and that it will soon launch a new product, Bloomberg reported Monday (Nov. 14).

“Our management team did a thorough review of year-to-date asset growth and reviewed each employee’s role and contribution,” Valkyrie Investments CEO Leah Wald said according to the report. “Like many other companies in our industry, cuts had to be made and ours was limited to sales and marketing.”

Valkyrie Investments did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

This report comes four days after the cryptocurrency exchange Coin base announced 60 layoffs after cutting 18% of its total full-time workforce in June.

The latest staff reductions at Coinbase were limited to the company’s recruiting and institutional onboarding teams, as the firm has lowered planned hiring needs and completed its institutional onboarding backlog, Coinbase Director of Corporate & Global Communications Elliot Suthers said at the time.

Even before last week’s FTX bankruptcy that involved around 130 affiliates, crypto firms had been downsizing, according to the Bloomberg report.

Other firms that have announced layoffs or seen employees leave in recent months include Digital Currency Group, Genesis, BlockFi, Crypto.com and Gemini Trust, the report said.

The unrest in the crypto industry caused in part by the faltering economy should not be surprising, Wald told the Wall Street Journal in June.

Crypto is traveling along the same path that tech stocks did during the dot-com era or silver in the days of the Hunt brothers, she said.

“All assets at the end of the day follow the same trend,” Wald said at the time. “As much as we think crypto is a new asset class, it’s not.”

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