Kraken, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, is to dramatically reduce its staff by 30%, or around 1,100 redundancies, as revealed by the company’s co-founder and CEO Jesse Powell.
The aim is to be able to adapt to current market conditions, as he revealed that the slowdown in growth, spurred by “macroeconomic and geopolitical factors”, had reduced customer demand, lowered trading volumes and reduced subscriptions.
“We had to grow quickly, more than tripling our workforce to provide these clients with the quality and service they expect from us,” Powell said. “This reduction brings our team size back to where it was just 12 months ago.”
“I remain extremely optimistic about cryptocurrencies and Kraken,” he added at a time when the market is experiencing severe turbulence.
The market has been hit hard since the FTX collapse, while many major market players are making massive layoffs.