Trading platform Crypto.com has announced that it will cut its global team by 20%, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Kris Marszalek, announced in a post on the company’s blog. The dispute revolves around the “confluence of negative economic developments” and “unexpected” events in the industry, which is like saying: war, inflation, the cooling of Bitcoin, and the catastrophic collapse of FTX.
It would be the second-largest round of layoffs for the Singapore-based company, which already laid off 250 workers in the middle of last year — but a recent report suggests more than 2,000 workers have left, either by invitation or at their own request. private initiative. The company didn’t know how to detect which positions are being downgraded this time around, but it did know how to point a finger, or in this case, the finger: FTX.
The company’s collapse in November last year had already experienced initial shocks, as early as June, but the main shock came at the end of the year. The misappropriation, use of user funds, and the resulting bankruptcy have “significantly damaged confidence in the industry,” Marszalek writes.
2022 was indeed a complicated year for the cryptocurrency market, which faced repeated scandals when the ink it ran with Cryptocrash. In this regard, Crypto.com CEO said: “We have ambitiously evolved into early 2022, building incredible momentum and aligning the trajectory with the rest of the industry.”
“This path changed rapidly with the confluence of negative economic developments,” he explains.
As with other companies in other industries, cryptocurrency companies are making bold decisions to try to outrun raindrops – only in this analogy does rain take different forms. On the one hand, the trust of consumers and users is fundamental to the growth of the industry. On the other hand, that same growth raises demands for transparency and regulation — which are to come, regulators in Europe and North America have already warned.
It turns out that “transparency” and “regulation” are not words that are well received by some decision makers, although there are many players Market nodded enthusiastically to the credibility that could come from this.
But the growth the CEO is talking about hasn’t been without its drawbacks. The company has been criticized for publicity it did with actor Matt Damon, accidentally sending a user more than $10 million “accidentally” and industry experts worried about its financial health. However, it received a vote of confidence from the Mazars auditor, who confirmed that users’ crypto assets are fully secured. However, days later, the auditor who consulted Binance also admitted that it had stopped working with clients in the cryptocurrency market.
Regarding the layoffs in July, Marzalek said that they faced macroeconomic frustration, but that they “don’t think about the collapse of FTX, which greatly hurts confidence in the industry.”
And that is why, as we continue to focus on prudent fiscal management, we had to make the difficult but necessary decision to extend the cuts [de trabalhadores] to better position the company for long-term success,”