Bittrex, Chainalysis lay off staff as BTC nears $24K 

Crypto exchange Bittrex and crypto analytics company Chainalysis announced layoffs in the first days of February, while Bitcoin (BTC) steadily continues on its increasing trajectory.

Bittrex will permanently lay off 83 people on Feb. 4, according to U.S. Employment Security Department’s website. Chainalysis, on the other hand, is set to send 44 employees home, according to a Forbes report.

Bittrex

Bittrex’s total staff number is unclear. The company has 284 employees on LinkedIn, 384 employees according to data from GrowJo, and 156 employees according to ZoomInfo’s numbers. Calculated by GrowJo’s data, the 83 people who got laid off correspond to 21.6% of Bittrex’s entire staff.

An internal message sent to all employees by Bittrex co-founder Richie Lai was leaked on Twitter on Feb. 1. In his message, Lai states:

“The market downturn triggered by multiple failures in the crypto ecosystem became an outright collapse by the end of the year. These events have caused us to reset our strategy,”

Chainalysis

The 44 people Chainalysis is laying off corresponds to 4.8% of the company’s total 900 employees.

Chainlysis Director of Communications Maddie Kennedy announced a “reorganization” of less than 5% of the company’s workforce and added that most of the staff would have new roles while the majority ones on sales were let go.

However, information Forbes obtained indicates that the main reason for the layoffs was the “collapsing private-sector demand as digital-asset prices and trading volume plummeted,” in addition to the company’s desire to launch new products focused on the finance sector.

Journalist at CryptoSlate

Zeynep is an academic who turned to crypto in 2018. Originating in social sciences, she is especially interested in the social impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies and strongly believes in their transmuting power.