Indian Crypto Exchange WazirX Lays Off 40% of Workforce
Major Indian crypto exchange WazirX has laid off around 40% of its staff, citing a drop in trading volume due to the bear market and regulatory climate in India.
The local news channel Economic Times reports that the figure corresponds to around 50 to 70 employees at the exchanges around 150 employees. WazirX said in a statement that the move will help it maintain financial stability and continue to serve its customers.
“The Indian crypto industry has had its unique challenges in terms of taxes, regulation and banking access. This has led to a dramatic drop in volume across all Indian crypto exchanges… As India’s first exchange, our priority is to be financially stable. and to continue to serve our customers. To achieve this, we have had to reduce our staff to weather the crypto winter,” the statement said.
WazirX further noted that it is not new to crypto bear markets as it lived through the 2018 cycle. In that time, it doubled down and built its innovative peer-to-peer engine. This is one reason why it is sure to come out stronger when the market inevitably turns bullish.
The affected employees have already been contacted and will be compensated with approximately 45 days’ salary as well as other support, the report states. They cut across several departments, including customer support and HR, where managers, analysts and associate managers/team leaders were among the dismissed employees.
WazirX is facing other problems amid the crypto bear market
In addition to the global crypto market downturn and India’s tax laws causing turmoil for WazirX, the company is also embroiled in other controversies. The exchange’s co-founder Nischal Shetty has been involved in an online battle with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhou (also CZ).
CZ took to Twitter to state that Binance is not linked to WazirX as commonly believed, as a purchase transaction was never completed. Nischal has denied the claim, and points to WazirX’s terms of use. He also stated that Binance owns the exchange’s domain name, has root access to its AWS servers, and owns all its crypto assets and crypto profits as well.
Meanwhile, the exchange was also successful after a dispute with the Enforcement Department (ED) – India’s economic crime-fighting agency – which froze its accounts for more than a month. Reuters reports that following an investigation, the ED has unfrozen assets worth up to $8.16 million that it previously linked to suspicious transactions.
