Major cryptocurrency exchanges and non-fungible (NFT) platforms are cutting staff to adapt to the market downturn.
Major cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms selling non-fungible digital assets have lost more than two-thirds of their value since peaking late last year.
Non-fungible asset (NFT) platform OpenSea has announced massive layoffs, joining other crypto firms in cutting staff during one of the most volatile periods in the industry’s history.
Co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer revealed on Twitter that his company has laid off up to 20% of its employees.
Finzer said the layoffs were due to “an unprecedented combination of a cryptocurrency winter and broad macroeconomic volatility.”
“We need to prepare the company for a possible protracted recession, and the changes we are making today allow us to maintain operations for several years under worst-case scenarios,” he added.
Today is a tough day for OpenSea as we are laying off about 20% of our team. Here is a note I shared with our team this morning: pic.twitter.com/E5k6gIegH7
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) July 14, 2022
The layoffs reflect the dire state of the cryptocurrency market, whose total value has fallen by more than two-thirds from last year’s peak.
OpenSea is one of the largest non-fungible token markets in the world, with over $10 billion in transactions since its launch in 2017.
Non-fungible tokens are digital assets that serve as certificates of authenticity for a range of assets and, in some cases, ownership of assets that range from expensive artwork featuring monkey figurines to collectibles such as celebrity autographs and physical goods such as rare whiskey box.
The OpenSe platform suffered a data breach at the end of June last year after an employee of Customer.io, an email partner contracted with the platform, leaked user data.
Source: media