Wave of Layoffs at Crypto Companies After Digital Currency Decline

Crypto firms have announced massive layoffs in recent days. The strong downturn of digital currencies such as bitcoin is causing the companies to now also want to cut costs.

 

In recent years, a lot of money went to the companies and they grew strongly, also in terms of staff numbers.

For example, crypto exchange Coinbase is cutting about a fifth of the jobs and the same applies to crypto lending platform BlockFi. At crypto exchange Crypto.com, 5 percent of the jobs disappear, at industry peer Gemini Trust that happens with 10 percent of the jobs.

The decline of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum is associated with higher interest rates. Crypto investments are seen by many people as risky and if there are alternatives to earn money with less risk, it depresses prices.

According to the website Coinmarketcap, which keeps track of the prices of digital coins on various exchanges, a bitcoin is still worth slightly more than USD 22,000. That is a quarter less than a week ago. Ethereum dropped in value by almost a third during the same period.

By the way, not the entire crypto world is in a downpour. CEO Changpeng Zhao of crypto exchange Binance announced earlier this week that he was hiring more people. Binance is also actively looking for potential acquisitions.