Crypto Firms cut Nearly 3,000 jobs in January despite Bitcoin’s rise

At least 14 crypto firms let people go in January, which was a hard month for crypto workers.

In the first month of 2023, crypto firms tightened their purse strings, with at least 2,900 crypto employees laid off across 14 crypto enterprises.

Sources say that Prime Trust, a provider of crypto infrastructure, is the latest company to start layoffs, which will reduce its staff by one-third.

Prime had 312 workers on LinkedIn at the time of writing, so the reduction would imply a 100-person loss.

Other recent layoffs include 30 employees from the crypto platform Matrixport, according to a Jan. 27 Bloomberg article, and around 100 employees from the crypto exchange Gemini, according to an earlier Jan. 23 report by The Information.

The largest January layoff was undertaken by crypto exchange Coinbase, which slashed its personnel by around 950 employees on January 10.

Its competitors, Crypto.com, Luno, and Huobi, all laid off about 500, 330, and 320 people, respectively.

Digital Currency Group (DCG) and its subsidiaries have also had to let go of a lot of workers. In January alone, 485 people lost their jobs as the company went through a financial crisis.

The most layoffs were at DCG’s Luno, which it owns. DCG itself lost 66 jobs, its subsidiary lending platform Genesis cut 63 jobs, and its asset management business HQ Digital closed, which cost 6 jobs.

The list was completed by the 200 workers laid off by crypto bank Silvergate, the 110 employees laid off by the Blockchain.com exchange, and the 96 employees laid off by Metamask’s parent firm, ConsenSys.

Meanwhile, SuperRare, a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, laid off 20 employees.

Even though Bitcoin (BTC) had a great month, reaching over $25,000 as institutional demand grew, these people lost their jobs.

However, large-scale crypto sector layoffs were not isolated incidents. In January alone, 48,000 individuals were laid off by just four companies: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce.

While some may fear there is more doom coming, Pantera Capital, a crypto hedge fund, says there has never been a better moment to launch a blockchain startup, citing bad markets as giving “less noise and distraction from creating.”