Crypto job cuts continue with layoffs at Polygon, Immutable, Fireblocks and more

However, even in the face of these job cuts, Polygon states that its financials are healthy and under control. "The treasury remains healthy, with a balance of more than $250 million and more than 1.9 billion MATIC, and we have crystallised our strategy for the next several years to help drive mass adoption of web3 by scaling Ethereum," the company said in its statement.

Polygon’s native cryptocurrency, MATIC, dropped 10 percent following the announcement. The coin fell from $1.47 per unit on February 21 to $1.32 on Feb 22. However, MATIC has recovered most of this lost ground and was trading at $1.40 at the time of writing.

On Wednesday, Feb 22, Australia’s largest crypto gaming startup, Immutable, announced that it would be laying off nearly 11 percent of its staff. According to the firm’s CEO and co-founder, James Ferguson, the job cuts were necessary to reduce the pressure on the company’s cash reserves and ensure its resources were used for the most important projects.

The company’s financial records comply with this narrative. They show that Immutable earned profits worth $27 million in the last financial year, but also had expenses worth $83 million; nearly half of these expenses (around $45 million) were spent on employees, consultants and freelancers.

Immutable is one of the largest crypto firms in Australia. Last March, it received $280 million in funding, resulting in a valuation of $3.5 million, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Fireblocks is an emerging crypto and blockchain service provider. In January last year, the firm raised $550 million in funding, taking it to a valuation of over $8 billion. In the same year, the company posted an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of more than $100 million. This is despite the catastrophic events of the last year and the fact that Fireblocks is just four years old.

Surprisingly though, the company announced that it would be axing 5 percent of its team on Feb 20. The firm’s CEO, Michael Shaulov, stated that the job cuts will allow the company to restructure itself as it continues to grow in the coming years.

"As we prepare for our next wave of growth, we want to ensure we are optimized to capture and serve Fireblocks’ new verticals, use cases and markets," said Shaulov. "As a result of this need, we underwent a small restructuring to the footprint of our global teams which will help position us to more effectively meet our business objectives and customers’ needs in 2023," said Shaulov in a statement. Therefore, unlike the previous crypto firms on this list, Fireblocks’ job cut was strategic more than reactive, or at least that’s what the firm says.

Chipper Cash is a popular African cross-border crypto payments platform. Since its launch in 2018, the firm has received nearly $305 million in funding from Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, etc. This includes a $150 million Series C funding round in Nov 2021, led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.

However, when FTX filed for bankruptcy, Chipper Cash’s valuation was slashed from $2 billion to $1.25 billion. This was around the same time that the firm was forced into its first round of layoffs, letting go of 12.5 percent of its employees. As per the company’s LinkedIn, Chipper Cash had 400 employees at the time. Therefore, the first round of job cuts would have resulted in around 50 employees losing their jobs.

However, it seems the effects of last year’s crypto winter, compounded by the FTX collapse, have been hard to shake off, with the firm announcing a second round of layoffs on February 20. Some local media houses reported that Chipper Cash would be letting go of nearly 100 employees in its latest job slash. The firm did not provide any official figures but did say the reports were relatively accurate. This means that the firm has let go of nearly 150 employees over the last 3 months or so.

If layoffs weren’t bad enough, several crypto firms are outright shutting down. For instance, on Feb 9, Local Bitcoins, a popular BTC exchange, announced that it would be winding down its operations after more than a decade in the business. More recently, on February 20, Galois Capital announced its shutdown after losing $40 million to FTX. In addition, crypto exchange tZero announced that it would shut shop by March 7. Closer to home, WazirX called it quits on its NFT marketplace, WazirX NFT, on February 22.

Layoffs and crypto firms shutting down are a cause for concern. However, with most tokens slowly increasing in valuation, better times could be just around the corner. However, nothing is certain and all we can do right now is wait and watch how things unfold.