coinedition.com
According to co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ben Zhou, the crypto exchange Bybit announced to cut its workforce by 30% in light of the ongoing bear market in the asset class.
Reductions in the workforce would be made across the board as the company approaches reorganization to prioritize operations, Zhou said on Sunday.
1) Difficult decision made today, but tough times demand tough decisions. I have just announced plans to reduce our workforce as part of an ongoing re-organisation of the business as we move to refocus our efforts for the deepening bear market.
— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) December 4, 2022
The Dubai-based Bybit is one of the top 20 largest crypto exchanges, with a trading volume of around $310 million over the last 24 hours.
Zhou reassured the clients that the decision was intended to ensure the “long-term sustainability” of the trading platform.
Zhou claimed in a Bloomberg interview that the general decline in crypto markets, BlockFi’s failure, and Genesis’ struggles are signs that “we are entering into an even colder winter than we had anticipated from both industry and market perspectives.”
Joining Bybit, Swyftx, an Australian crypto exchange, also announced that it would lay off 40% of its workers because of the deteriorating downturn in digital asset markets following the collapse of foreign exchange FTX.
Swyftx CEO Alex Harper told the staff on Monday that the company was making the reductions in anticipation of a “worst-case scenario” of continued decline in the crypto markets next year and additional “black swan” incidents similar to the FTX incident.
Harper claimed in the statement that the difficult choice was essential to surviving the long crypto winter. He said,
Our business is uniquely well-positioned to weather events like FTX […] But as much as we might wish it, we do not exist in isolation from the market, and that’s why we are acting fast and acting early by significantly reducing the size of our team.
Harper also disclosed that the staff reductions would reduce operational costs on the company’s balance sheet and that his company would become more risk-averse through this business decision.