The massive layoffs that rocked the cryptocurrency industry seem to be slowing down. In February, the number of layoffs in the industry decreased to 570 people. A month earlier, 2,800 employees lost their jobs, the publication reports. Cointelegraph.
The layoffs affected 12 companies, but major exchanges such as Coinbase, Crypto.com and Huobi did not lay off anyone. Most of the reductions affected firms engaged in analytical research and software development.
Despite the fact that the cryptocurrency market has seriously recovered in 2023, cryptanalytic companies Elliptic and Messari have cut 10% and 15% of their staff, respectively. On February 23, Messari founder Ryan Selkis tweeted that the layoffs had to be resorted to due to the unfavorable market situation and the need to restructure the team. This affected 27 employees.
On February 24, a spokesman for Elliptic said that the layoff of 20 employees was due to the need to reduce costs.
Major blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said it has asked 44 of its 900 employees to vacate their jobs. The layoffs affected mainly the sales department.
The lion’s share of the cuts in the previous month came from crypto exchanges – 84% of those laid off in January worked in this sector. One of the main reasons for such radical methods of dealing with the crisis was the dramatic decline in trading volumes on the sites. Along with the decrease in volumes, profits from commissions also decreased. Layoffs were especially large at such popular platforms as Huobi, Coinbase, Blockchain.com, Crypto.com and Luno.
Moreover, for some exchanges, the January wave of layoffs was not the first – the first wave took place in the summer, after the collapse of the Terra crypto project.
In January, crypto companies cut 41% of their total layoffs for all of 2022. And this is far from the limit – the total number of layoffs in 2023 may exceed the same indicator of last year by 7,000 times if the market is in a fever and macroeconomic indicators do not inspire confidence in the future.
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