Luno, a cryptocurrency exchange company, has made the announcement that it will be laying off 35% of its employees.
This adds Luno’s name to the growing list of industry players that are dismissing staff due to the bear market. Other players on this list include Coinbase, Crypto.com, Bybit, Huobi, and Gemini, among others.
“It is with deep regret that I have to announce that we will be reducing our overall Luno team by 35%,” CEO Marcus Swanepoel wrote in a message to Lunauts on the company’s website. The message was directed toward Lunauts in all of the company’s different regions.
As explanations for why the cryptocurrency industry has been having so much difficulty as of late, he cited the “global economic slowdown,” the “much bigger fall in the tech sector overall,” the “crypto winter,” and other recent occurrences in the field.
Luno is said to have approximately 960 employees, according to the company profile on LinkedIn. This will have an impact on the employment of more than 330 people.
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More On Luno layoff
The marketing departments of Luno are going to be significantly impacted as a result of the layoffs. A representative for Luno told CNBC that the layoffs will have “little or no impact on core operations, and compliance departments.” CNBC cited this statement as coming from the spokesperson.
“2022 was an exceptionally challenging year for the technology sector as a whole, and in particular for the cryptocurrency market.” Coinbase laid off 18% of its workforce in 2018, and further 950 employees were let go earlier this month. The cryptocurrency exchanges Bybit (30%), Huobi (30%), BitMEX (30%), and Crypto.com (30%) are also members of this club.
The struggling Digital Currency Group is the parent company of the cryptocurrency known as Luno (DCG). The company’s headquarters are located in London, but it also has offices in other European countries, Africa, and in South East Asia. DCG, which is just one of the many cryptocurrency organizations that have been caught up in the domino effect of FTX, is currently dealing with a number of problems.
UST and FTX
The previous year, they laid off 10% of their workforce and discontinued their wealth-management services. Cameron Winklevoss, one of the company’s co-founders, threatened to sue Barry Silbert, the company’s CEO, when Genesis, one of its subsidiaries, filed for protection from creditors under the bankruptcy code.
In the event that Barry and DCG do not come to their senses and present creditors with a reasonable offer, “we will be initiating a lawsuit against Barry and DCG in the very near future,” he stated.
The cryptocurrency market had a reasonably calm start to the year, but it suffered its first significant blow when the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) plummeted quickly and unexpectedly. Despite the fact that the value of the coin was intended to be tied to the value of the US dollar, its value plummeted all the way to zero, wiping out 18 billion dollars worth of market cap from the cryptocurrency industry.
The spectacular fall of UST had an effect on the market as a whole, including crypto lender Celcius. It was accurately described as a “series of shocks” by Luno’s CEO, and it led to the termination of 150 employees.
The fall of FTX brought about new challenges for an already troubled cryptocurrency market, which had been unsettled by the earlier fall of UST. UST had been the previous exchange that failed.