- The crypto winter has taken more victims, with Crypto.com and BlockFi announcing job cuts
- BlockFi has cut 20% of its workforce, while Crypto.com has shed 5%
- Crypto.com has in the last year spent close to a billion dollars in promotional activities
The coming crypto winter has seen more casualties, with Crypto.com and BlockFi shedding more than 400 jobs in total. The news was somewhat buried, appropriately enough, by the crypto market collapse yesterday, but the news that two more companies were taking such measures to cope with the newly crowned bear market is a sign of the coming severity, as well as a sign that many organisations have learnt their lessons from the 2018/19 winter.
BlockFi Cuts 20% of Workforce
BlockFi CEO Zac Prince took to Twitter yesterday to announce that the lending platform was reducing its headcount by 20%, a large cut that speaks volumes about how seriously this downturn is being taken:
This morning we announced that after taking significant time to plan and consider, we are reducing our headcount by roughly 20%. This is not a decision we take lightly and is one that brings us great sadness.
— Zac Prince (@BlockFiZac) June 13, 2022
Prince reassured users that they would not “experience any material changes to the quality of service they have come to expect”, that their funds were safe and that “all platforms and products continue to operate normally.” Prince stated that the reasons for the cuts were the same as with many others in the tech space, with the company having been “impacted by the dramatic shift in macroeconomic conditions, which have had a negative impact on our growth rate.”
The decision to fire 20% of the workforce was put into context by one Twitter user who pointed out that just 15 months ago BlockFi was recruiting for up to 100 hires to fill positions as the company expanded:
nearly one year such a difference https://t.co/Hcpkxf48id
— Cato (@LesbianCarwash4) June 13, 2022
Crypto.com Sheds Jobs After Billion-dollar Promotional Blitz
BlockFi’s decision comes 48 hours after Crypto.com announced that it was laying off 260 employees from its corporate sector, equating to around 5% of its workforce. Founder and CEO Kris Marszalek took the same route, announcing the cull on Twitter, saying that the actions the company took in the 2018/19 winter made them one of the biggest winners in the recent bull market:
Lot’s of questions and speculation flying around regarding what https://t.co/pFc4PzqqHR is doing during the market downturn. My thoughts below 🧵
— Kris | Crypto.com (@kris) June 11, 2022
However, the Crypto.com job cut hits differently given the amount of money the company has spent on promotions recently, including spending $14 million on a Superbowl advert – one million dollars more than the cost of retaining 260 staff for a year at the U.S. national average salary.
Crypto.com also shelled out a whopping $700 million for naming rights to the Staples Center last November, as well as recently paying to be an official 2022 Qatar World Cup sponsor and landing a five-year sponsorship deal with Australian Rules Football.
But still, those 260 employees’ demands must have hit them real hard.
