China-Singapore Jingwei, June 15. According to the Financial Times Chinese website reported on the 15th, major digital asset exchanges are laying off hundreds of employees. At present, the rapid expansion of the industry has suddenly reversed. The hot momentum of the past two years has been replaced by the cold wave of cryptocurrency. replaced.
U.S.-listed Coinbase on Tuesday announced plans to cut nearly one-fifth of its workforce, bringing the total to more than 1,000, after rivals such as Gemini, Crypto.com and BlockFi already cut jobs.This year’s slump in cryptocurrency prices has dampened trading activity, the lifeblood of the industry.
Julian Sawyer, the former CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform Bitstamp, was quoted as saying, “If there is no trading volume, there is no funding, and it looks like it will be difficult for some time to come.”
The market capitalization of the world’s 500 largest crypto tokens has fallen from a high of $3.2 trillion in November 2021 to less than $1 trillion this week, erasing years of major currencies like bitcoin and ethereum, data show. increase.The pullback reflects an overall decline in global financial markets.
According to calculations by the Financial Times based on CryptoCompare data, from March to May, spot trading volume across major crypto platforms averaged around $800 billion per month, less than half the level of the same period in 2021.
The report notes that Coinbase has faced backlash from both inside and outside the company.Last month, the company said it planned to cut or even eliminate some jobs, and Chief Financial Officer Alessia Haas said in a panel interview last week that "we are in an uncertain time."
A former Gemini executive said the company’s recently announced layoffs were just the tip of the iceberg, saying the exchange “hired too many people” during last year’s cryptocurrency bull run."10% is totally undervalued and Gemini has quietly fired some important people since March."
Charlie Cooper, managing director of blockchain software firm R3, warned that the crypto industry is often enveloped in an atmosphere of "arrogance."“The laws of economics also apply to cryptocurrencies. If you keep believing that your asset class is immune to the laws of economics, you will have a hard time convincing people in mainstream finance that you are serious about doing business.”
Increased regulation of crypto assets has also increased costs for operators, the report said."If you do it right, the regulatory overhead is huge because we have to go deep into the old world and keep up with the new world," said Eric Dems, CEO of Austrian exchange Bitpanda.
【Editor: Ge Cheng】
