Luno crypto exchange announces job cuts affecting 35% of employees

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Luno, a cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange owned by Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy Group, announced a large round of job cuts on Wednesday.

The lay­offs will affect 35% of Luno’s total head­count, CEO Mar­cus Swanepoel announced in a mes­sage on the cryp­to exchange’s web­site. They come after what Swanepoel described as an “incred­i­bly tough year for the broad­er tech indus­try and in par­tic­u­lar the cryp­to market.”

Over the past year, some pop­u­lar cryp­tocur­ren­cies have seen their prices fall sharply. Bit­coin, for exam­ple, is down near­ly 39% over the past 12 months, while Ethereum and Solana have dropped about 37% and 74%, respectively.

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“Tur­bu­lence” has, accord­ing to Swanepoel, affect­ed Luno’s “over­all growth and rev­enue num­bers,” prompt­ing lay­offs and oth­er measures.

He point­ed to a “num­ber of unfore­seen and very extreme events,” includ­ing a “glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn,” an “even big­ger down­turn in the tech sec­tor over­all,” a “cryp­to win­ter” and recent events in the cryp­to indus­try that have harmed it. One of the “shocks” was the recent, rapid col­lapse of exchange FTX.

Illustration of various cryptocurrencies

Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of cryp­tocur­ren­cies are seen in this illus­tra­tion. (Reuters / Dado Ruvic / Illus­tra­tion / File / Reuters Photos)

FTX has been engag­ing in Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings since it filed to do so a cou­ple of months ago. In con­nec­tion to the firm and its sud­den col­lapse, founder and for­mer CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has since been hit with a slew of crim­i­nal charges to which he has plead­ed not guilty.

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Such events “in turn [have] impact­ed us indi­rect­ly in a num­ber of ways: on the cap­i­tal side, a sig­nif­i­cant­ly more con­strained fund­ing envi­ron­ment, with the market’s focus shift­ing from long term invest­ment to short­er term prof­itabil­i­ty, and on the oper­at­ing side, a neg­a­tive impact on mar­ket sen­ti­ment and con­se­quent­ly on growth and rev­enue for our busi­ness, along with all of our peers and com­peti­tors,” Swanepoel told employees.

Luno’s cus­tomers and oper­a­tions have not been impact­ed, accord­ing to the CEO.

Crypto coins

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy mix­ing plat­form, Tor­na­do Cash, has been hit with U.S. sanc­tions over alle­ga­tions of mon­ey laun­der­ing. (Reuters / Dado Ruvic / Illus­tra­tion / File / Reuters)

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Oth­er com­pa­nies in the indus­try have recent­ly made announce­ments about reduc­ing their work­force fol­low­ing a bumpy year for crypto.

Crypto.com revealed plans to slash 20% of its employ­ees in mid-Jan­u­ary. Ear­li­er in the month, Coin­base said 20% of its work­ers would be laid off. 

In late Novem­ber, Krak­en cut rough­ly 1,100 jobs.

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