Crypto Exchange Blockchain.com Reduces Workforce by 25%
by Arthur · July 21, 2022
Blockchain.com has become the latest crypto company to announce mass layoffs. Earlier today, the stock exchange said it was reduces workforce by 25%or around 150 people.
The entire Argentine section of the exchange will be closed and plans to expand to other territories have been halted. Around 44% of the cuts affect employees in Argentina, while around a quarter of the affected workforce is from the US and 16% from the UK.
The stock market tightens the bag after taking one 270 million dollars here from exposure, in the form of US dollars and crypto loans, to now bankrupt Singapore-based crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, aka 3AC.
In total, 3AC owes the eye watering 3.5 billion dollars to its creditors, of which $2.36 billion comes from one loan from crypto broker Genesis Global Trading.
Crypto holiday season
The crypto industry is full of stories of insolvency after historical collapse of algorithmic stablecoin platform Terra in early May, and the subsequent crash in the crypto market.
In recent weeks, several high-profile lenders, including Voyager and Celsiushas filed for bankruptcy, although in Voyager’s case, as in crypto lender Blockfis, help has come in the form of rescue operations from crypto exchange FTX.
So basically it’s a liquidity crunch, or a “crypto winter”, which has also seen major crypto companies major cuts in their workforce.
On June 2, Gemini, a crypto exchange owned by billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, was among the first of the crypto titans to announce they were laying off employees. ONE blog posts said the company would cut about 10% of its workers because of “turbulent market conditions that are likely to persist for some time.”
Coin base was next. In a blog post announcing 1,100 redundancies, or 18% of the workforce, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote: “It is now clear to me that we overstaffed.” Just last week, Coinbase announced that it had frozen hiring and rescinded job offers it had made to potential employees.
Last week, NFT the OpenSea marketplace announced on Twitter it got rid of 20% of its team, citing “an unprecedented combination of crypto winters and broad macroeconomic instability.”
Meanwhile, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, remains poker-faced; in mid-June, CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that there is still employment.
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