‘Had to reduce staff to weather crypto winter’: WazirX lays off 40% of its employees

Indian exchange WazirX has laid off 40 per cent of its employees, in order to “weather the crypto winter”. As many as 50-70 employees, which amounts to 40 per cent of its staff, have been laid off.

The employees were told on Friday that they would be paid for 45 days, but were asked not to work henceforth. Their accesses were also withdrawn, a report by Coindesk said.

In a statement on Saturday, WazirX said that the crypto market has been in the grip of a bear market because of the global economic slowdown. Additionally, the Indian crypto industry has had its unique problems when it comes to taxes, regulations, and banking access, leading to a dramatic fall in volumes in exchanges.

It said that its priority at this point is to be financially stable and to continue serving their customers. "To achieve this, we've had to reduce our staff to weather the crypto winter. This situation is similar to the trying times the industry faced in 2018; at that time, we doubled down and built our innovative P2P engine,” it said.

The company further added that the industry operates in cycles, and that a bear run means that there is a spectacular bull market ahead. “We will continue to focus on our customer needs and continue to build. We are confident that we will come out stronger when the bull market arrives,” it said.

The Coindesk report stated that the workforce has been cut from several departments including customer support and HR, and from several ranks such as managers, analysts, associate managers and team leads. According to the report, the entire public policy and communications team was fired.

As per CoinGecko data, WazirX’s daily trading volumes have declined from $478 million on October 28, 2021 to $1.5 million on October 1.

Also read: ED freezes WazirX and Ethereum token Tether’s cryptocurrencies worth Rs 47.64 lakh