1 year ago
88 Crypto billionaires and Gemini co-founders, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, have stated that the exchange will ‘part ways with approximately 10% of the workforce.’ In a June 2 blog post, the founders said that the industry is in a contraction phase of crypto winter. They also said that the market weakness is also enhanced by the ‘current macroeconomic and geopolitical turmoil.’
The Gemini top executives have explained that the firm has shifted focus on ‘critical’ products and optimized the teams for the “current, turbulent market conditions that are likely to persist for some time.”
On the decision of the job cuts, the post highlighted:
“Every great company throughout history has faced similar challenges along the way and Gemini is no different. And as painful as this moment is, we ultimately see it as an opportunity to double-down on our strongest ideas and customer-centric products…”
Interestingly, when compared to 2021, the crypto market has lost more than 50% of its total market cap. Bitcoin is down nearly 56% trying to remain above $30,000, when compared to its all-time high of $69,000 recorded in November 2021.
Prices Have Affected Trading Volumes
In January 2022, Bloomberg had quoted Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Owen Lau, who warned that dropping crypto prices “could drive lower trading volume when it gets to the point to discourage traders to get engaged.”
The analyst added:
“There is a possibility that digital assets price to go flat such as getting into a crypto winter after a price decline.”
In the meantime, Coingecko’s April report for Q1 2022 also underlined that:
“In Q1 2022 spot trading volume across the top-10 centralized and decentralized exchanges declined from $6.08 trillion to $3.79 trillion compared to Q4 2021.”
It reiterated that volumes have taken a significant hit. Furthermore, the market did not get any respite after that, since Terra collapsed massively creating another round of turmoil in the market.
Gemini Is Not Alone In Job Cutting
In the meantime, another Bloomberg report has cited several sources that say that Coinbase-backed crypto exchange, Rain Financial Inc., has also laid off several employees. Based on the available reports, tech firms, including Coinbase have slowed down on hiring while BitMEX and Robinhood have also cut some of their staff members.
However, not everyone has slowed down. Binance Labs recently announced that it raised $500 million for a new Web3-focused investment fund after Andreessen Horowitz launched a similar $4.5 billion fund.
