Blockchain.com cuts 25% of staff, closes Argentina office
No job is safe in the crypto industry right now as long as the entire market is stuck in the current crypto winter.
CoinDesk originally reported that Blockchain.com cut 25% of its staff on Thursday, with the company citing the current bear market for its new need to close some windows and kick some employees to the curb. This also includes the company closing its Argentina-based offices. Just under half of the laid-off employees are based in Argentina, with a further 26% in the US and a further 16% in the UK
The company had reportedly received most of its demand from the United States, U.K., and markets in Africa, so it claims closing the Argentina-based office is a move towards consolidation. It’s a sad move for a company that started as the first bitcoin blockchainchain explorer in 2011, which later started offering crypto wallet and exchange services.
Blockchain.com declined to comment for the story. The report said Blockchain.com had grown from 150 to over 600 employees in the last year or so, which means close to 150 employees have been cut from many parts of the world. In addition to redundant employees, the company is cutting back on institutional lending and the NFT marketplace. Laid-off employees will apparently receive severance pay of between 4 and 12 weeks and job replacement assistance for only those based in the USK. and the United States
The company told CoinDesk that staffing cuts bring the crypto broker back to staffing levels it had at the start of the year, which was a much lauded time for the entire crypto community in general. The Dallas Cowboys signed a sponsorship deal with Blockchain.com just this April, before the bottom fell out of the crypto market once the Terra/Luna stablecoin ecosystem collapsed. Blockchain.com’s headquarters are based in Miami, Florida, which has been trying to stay a haven for various blockchain-based businesses.
In a mid-June blog post, company CEO Peter Smith said they had been through crypto crashes beforeand they had “prepared for this moment, and through 2021 invested in our systems to ensure our products remain available and perform as customers expect.”
But what may be different this time is that there’s a whole lot of money the company may never see again thanks to the collapse of the hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. The firm that once managed $18 billion for many crypto-based businesses defaulted on $675 million in bitcoin loans, and a Virgin Islands The court ordered the company to liquidate its assets. Blockchain.com is reportedly dealing with a $270 million loss after 3AC closed up shop. It remains unclear whether any of the loans the companies gave the hedge fund will ever be returned since its managers have confused.
According to a report from The block3AC had previously borrowed and repaid more than $2 billion from Blockchain.com over four years, according to a now-removed statement, which was $1.3 billion more than previously disclosed. The company told The Block that it “intends to hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Of course it isn’t just switch to announce cuts the last two months. Gemini, which is owned by tech veterans the Winklevoss twins, cut about 100 employees back in June and reportedly cut another chunk of its workforce earlier this week, according to CoinTelegraph citing an unnamed source close to the company.
The largely unregulated crypto industry may be trying to keep his head above them water in the current bear market, but at least they can celebrate that many proposed and feared crypto regulations are being thwarted. According to the documents reviewed by CoinDeskThe South Korean government was poised to drop new taxes on crypto income, but in a sudden twist officials delayed these tax reforms until 2025 when they were originally set fall in 2023. Meanwhile, it appears that crypto regulations being pushed by incoming US congressional leaders are as well mostly toothless.
