Blockchain.com Says Goodbye to 25% of Staff, Closes Argentina Office

No job is safe in the crypto industry right now as long as the entire market lingers in the current crypto winter.

CoinDesk originally reported that the Blockchain.com was cutting 25% of its staff Thursday, with the company citing the current bear market for its new need to shutter a few windows and kick a few employees to the curb. This also includes the company closing its Argentina-based offices. A little less than half of the fired employees are based in Argentina, with another 26% in the U.S. and another 16% in the U.K.

The company had reportedly been getting most of its demand from U.S., U.K., and markets in Africa, so it claims that shuttering its Argentina-based office is a move toward consolidation. It’s a sad move for a company that started as the first bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011, which later started offering crypto wallet and exchange services.

Blockchain.com declined to comment on the story. The report said that Blockchain.com had grown from 150 to 600 staff over the past year or so, which means close to 150 staff are being cut from many parts of the globe. In addition to axed staff, the company is cutting back on institutional lending and its NFT marketplace. Fired employees will apparently get severance of between 4 and 12 weeks and job replacement assistance for only those based in the U.K. and U.S.

The company told CoinDesk that staffing cuts bring the crypto broker back to staffing levels it had at the start of the year, which was a much rosey-er time for the whole crypto environment in general. The Dallas Cowboys signed a sponsorship deal with Blockchain.com just this past April, before the bottom fell out of the crypto market once the Terra/Luna stablecoin ecosystem collapsed. Blockchain.com’s headquarters is based in Miami, Florida, which has attempted to become a haven for various blockchain-based enterprises.

In a mid-June blog post, company CEO Peter Smith said they had gone through crypto crashes before, and they had been “preparing for this moment, and throughout 2021 invested in our systems to ensure our products remain available and functioning as our customers expect.”

But what may be different this time around is that there is a whole lot of money the company might never see again thanks to the collapse of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. The firm that once managed $18 billion for many crypto-based businesses defaulted on $675 million bitcoin loans, and a Virgin Islands court ordered the firm to liquidate its assets. Blockchain.com is reportedly dealing with a $270 million shortfall after 3AC shut down shop. It remains unclear if any of the loans companies gave the hedge fund will ever be returned since its leaders have skedaddled.

According to a report from The Block, 3AC had beforehand borrowed and repaid greater than $2 billion from Blockchain.com over 4 years, in line with a now-removed affidavit, which was $1.3 billion greater than previously disclosed. The firm advised The Block they “intend to hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

Of course it isn’t the solely alternate to announce cuts prior to now two months. Gemini, which is owned by the old-school tech gamers the Winklevoss twins, reduce round 100 workers again in June and reportedly reduce one other stable chunk of its workforce earlier this week, in line with CoinTelegraph citing an unnamed supply near the corporate.

The largely unregulated crypto business could be making an attempt to maintain their head above water within the present bear market, however not less than they are often celebrating that many proposed and feared crypto rules are being stymied. According to the paperwork reviewed by CoinDesk, the South Korean authorities was all set to drop new taxes on crypto earnings, however in a sudden twist officials delayed these tax reforms till 2025 after they have been initially set to drop in 2023. Meanwhile, it appears that evidently crypto rules being pushed by come congressional leaders within the U.S. are additionally largely toothless.