Luno will be discarding 330 people out of about 960 employees.
The prolonged crypto winter that has been taking a hit on all and sundry has now impacted DCG-owned crypto exchange Luno as it plans to lay off some employees. Many crypto companies have been dismissing their workers amid the bearish market. The likes of Kraken, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Galaxy Digital, and many more have reduced their headcounts as they navigated through the trying times. In addition to staff layoffs, some crypto companies led by FTX also filed for bankruptcy.
Luno Is Dismissing about 330 Employees
Luno announced that it would be shedding off 35% of its global employees. The company’s CEO Marcus Swanepoel passed the disheartening information while speaking in a live-streamed town hall on Wednesday. Per the development, Luno will be discarding 330 people out of about 960 employees accounted for on LinkedIn. Citing an internal memo by the CEO, CNBC wrote:
“2022 has been an incredibly tough year for the broader tech industry and in particular the crypto market. Luno unfortunately hasn’t been immune to this turbulence, which has affected our overall growth and revenue numbers.”
A Luno spokesperson noted that the employees’ layoff will have “minimal or no impact on key operating and compliance teams.” On the other hand, workers in the marketing teams would be most impacted. The company will also dial down its operations in the US and Australia. Luno’s operations are spread across Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The company is part of the Digital Currency Group (DCG) crypto conglomerate, one of the firms involved in the FTX crash. Just as Luno is beginning to feel the heat, another DCG subsidiary Genesis recently filed bankruptcy.
The dramatic crumble of the TerraUSD in May also contributed to the persistent crypto winter. At the same time, higher interest rates from the Feds also contributed to the current market status. The crypto market has lost more than $2 trillion of valuation since the peak of the crypto rally in November 2021.
“While we anticipated a downturn and proactively planned ahead with a business and funding model that can be resilient to some of these factors, the sheer scale and speed of all of this happening, and all at the same time, has put significant strain on our original plan. What this means in practice is that in addition to streamlining our strategy to focus on our core strengths, we need to also substantially decrease our cost base – which includes employee headcount in all of our markets – in order for us to be set up for success going forward.”
Despite the declines across multiple crypto assets, Bitcoin hit $23,000 for the first time since August. At the time, market intelligence platform Sentiment revealed that Bitcoin whales amassed about 64,638 BTCs worth almost $1.46 billion in two weeks.
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