Blockfolio has followed in the footsteps of Bitmain, ShapeShift, and Steemit by cutting staff numbers in response to the crypto winter that has affected the operations of almost every organization in the industry. This comes weeks after the company completed a Series A financing round of $11.5 million, which Blockfolio said would help them “leverage our unparalleled reach to continue innovating as a global leader in the space.” Clearly this innovation did not include the incubator project Datablock, which was sidelined and the five-person team assigned to it let go late last week.
Datablock Doesn’t Leave the Blocks
Datablock was intended to allow customers to monetize their data, with Blockfolio lined up to be the first customer, and a portion of the Series A financing had been allocated to it. However, projects that were easy to sell a couple of years ago now face a much more challenging market, as Blockfolio CEO Ed Moncada explained to Crypto Briefing:
It was a very benevolent idea. We wanted to create a market that made our app profitable for users as well as useful. But an idea that was worth $40M a year ago would be very hard to raise against today, and the development costs outweighed the benefits of continuing without a clear understanding of the length of this bear season.
The Bear Market Strikes Again
Closing down Datablock meant that the team working on the project were also let go, as the crypto bear market produced yet more real-world casualties. Headlines of this sort began towards the end of last year. When Steemit announced in November that they had to lay off an incredible 70% of their workforce it became clear that the tide was definitely turning, and that more cuts would be coming across the board as prices dropped and funds dried up. Sure enough, mining operation Bitmain fired their entire Bitcoin Cash development team at the end of 2018 and only last week ShapeShift let go 37 of its workforce.
With the bear market showing little signs of easing up, it can only be a matter of time before more employees feel the chill of the crypto winter.
