Blockchain.com cuts staff as layoffs persist
Cryptocurrency trading platform Blockchain.com is reportedly cutting 28% of its workforce.
“The crypto ecosystem is facing significant headwinds as the rate corrects from the challenges of the past year,” the company told CoinDesk in an email published on Thursday (January 12). “To better balance product supply with demand, we have made the difficult decision to reduce operating costs and headcount to bring the company to court size.”
PYMNTS has reached out to Blockchain.com for comment, but has not received a response.
These job cuts – affecting 110 workers – follow an earlier round of layoffs at the company, which saw 150 workers let go last June.
These layoffs came in the wake of the company’s $270 million loss to Three Arrows Capital, a crypto hedge fund that had an estimated $10 billion in assets and made some extremely risky bets on decentralized finance projects like the Terra/LUNA algorithmic stablecoin.
In October, it was reported that Blockchain.com was considering a “down round” of funding that would have reduced the company’s value from the $14 billion it previously reached in 2022.
The jobs at Blockchain.com come days after crypto exchange Coinbase said it was eliminating 20% of its staff as the industry continues to suffer through its long “winter.”
“As we examined our scenarios for 2023, it became clear that we needed to reduce spending to increase our chances of doing well in each scenario,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told employees earlier this week as the company conducted its third round of cut.
“While parting ways with our fellow colleagues is always painful, there was no way to reduce our expenses significantly enough without considering headcount changes.”
Other crypto firms cutting jobs include cryptocurrency lender Genesis – which is reportedly laying off 30% of its staff and is also considering bankruptcy – and exchange Kraken.
According to CoinDesk, the layoffs leave Blockchain.com with 280 workers, after growing from 160 employees in early 2021. Laid-off employees will receive severance packages.
An outlier in all this is the industry’s biggest exchange, Binance, which this week said it plans to increase its staff by 15% to 30% this year after hiring nearly 5,000 workers in 2022.
“We will continue to build and hopefully we will increase again before the next bull market,” CEO Changpeng Zhao told an industry conference on Wednesday (Jan 11).
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