The Luno cryptocurrency exchange, based in London, warned its staff on Wednesday that 35% of its global workers would be laid off. The company employs roughly 960 people; thus, 330 positions would be impacted, according to Luno’s LinkedIn profile. According to reports by CNBC, the company’s CEO, Marcus Swanepoel, informed staff members of the layoffs via a live-streamed town hall. Swanepoel wrote to CNBC in an internal memo:
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
According to a Luno spokeswoman, the redundancies would mostly affect the company’s marketing teams and have “minimal or no impact on key operating and compliance teams.”
The exchange, which has its headquarters in London and has offices there as well as in Singapore, Lagos, Sydney, and Cape Town, South Africa, is a division of the DCG conglomerate. The collapse of Sam Bankman-crypto Fried’s empire, FTX, left DCG in the dust. As a result, DCG’s lending arm, Genesis, filed for bankruptcy last week.
Since the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD’s demise in May last year, the cryptocurrency sector has endured a string of setbacks. Swanepoel stated in a message distributed to staff members this week that the cryptocurrency industry has had a “series of shocks,” adding:
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.
Almost 11 cryptocurrency companies reported layoffs in January 2023 alone, resulting in the loss of close to 2000 jobs.
