Yahoo Finance Crypto industry starts 2023 with fresh wave of job cuts
The cryptocurrency industry saw a swathe of job-cuts throughout 2022, and, just days into the new year, another round of lay-offs is set to hit the struggling sector.
In 2022, nearly 27,000 people lost their jobs in the cryptocurrency industry, according to a report by Coindesk.
Now Huobi Global, a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange and one of the industry's major players has plans to axe 20% of its workforce.
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Huobi is ranked number 18 by trading volume in a list of the world's cryptocurrency exchanges.
Watch: Web3 sectors to watch in 2023 | The Crypto Mile
A spokesperson for Huobi told Cointelegraph on Friday: “With the current state of the bear market, a very lean team will be maintained going forward.
"The personnel optimisation aims to implement the brand strategy, optimise the structure, improve efficiency and return to the top three.
“The planned layoff ratio is about 20%, but it is not implemented now."
So far in 2023, two other cryptocurrency-related firms have implemented job cuts.
On 5 January, crypto lender Genesis Global Trading laid off 30% of its staff.
This was a reduction of an estimated 62 employees, bringing its staff total to 145.
Genesis is owned by Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also CoinDesk's parent company.
DCG suffered serious wounds from its exposure to the collapse of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital in 2022.
In the interdependent pool of crypto lending, DCG owes Winklevoss Twin trading platform Gemini about $900m.
On Sunday, Gemini publicly reached out to DCG boss Barry Silbert in an attempt to retrieve the funds owed to its users. Silbert has yet to respond, but a positive resolution of DCG's woes is needed in order for the crypto industry to begin the new year on a steady footing.
Another round of crypto-related job cuts was announced on 5 January, when crypto-bank Silvergate Capital axed 200 jobs, about 40% of its workforce.
Silvergate Capital saw massive fourth-quarter withdrawals when investors raced to cash-out their crypto deposits after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in early November 2022.
Read more: FTX bankruptcy sees 80,000 UK crypto investors lose funds
Total deposits from digital asset customers on the banking platform declined to $3.8bn (£3.12bn) from $11.9bn at the end of the third quarter. This was a decline of roughly 68%.
The cryptocurrency market saw a value increase on Monday, with the entire market capitalisation rising by 3%.
Of the top 10 blue-chip cryptocurrencies, Cardano (ADA-USD) performed strongest and saw a hike of almost 17% in the last 24 hours, to $0.32 at the time of writing.
The second most valuable cryptocurrency, ethereum (ETH-USD), also saw a reversal of the subdued crypto-price action over the Christmas period, up 4.26% to $1,317.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) broke through the psychological $17,000 mark to $17,243 as of the time of writing.
