Breaking: Huobi Likely To Announce Massive Layoff Plan

Amid turbulent times in the cryptocurrency space, exchanges are finding it difficult to withstand financial adversities. The last two months saw several top crypto exchanges, including leaders like Coinbase, announce plans to downsize their workforce.

Extreme Market Situation Fuels Layoffs In Crypto

The common undercurrent among all the announcements was the extreme market situation along with the macroeconomic factors. As recently as last week, Europe-based exchange BitPanda blamed dramatic change in the market sentiment for announcing job cuts. This came in backdrop of another exchange Bybit, which announced plans earlier to layoff employees.

The market changes, fueled by rising inflation and concerns about an incoming recession forced the decision, BitPanda said at the time. There is lot of uncertainty in the financial markets currently, it added.

Huobi To Announce 30% Job Cuts?

Huobi, a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange, is expected to announce downsizing its employee count by more than 30%, it is learnt. According to an exclusive scoop by Wu Blockchain on Twitter, Huobi will in all likelihood start layoffs. The move is said to be forced due to a sharp decline in Huobi’s revenues.

“Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi will start layoffs, which may exceed 30%. The main reason is the sharp drop in revenue after the removal of all Chinese users.”

In October last year, a ban on crypto in China forced Huobi to start removing millions of Chinese user accounts from its platform. This appears to be the reason why the exchange suffered in its revenue generation.

At the time, the company warned its users to close their positions prior to the deadline to prevent the risk of potential market fluctuations before settlement. The ban also saw Huobi completely shut down futures, contracts, and other derivatives services for all Chinese users.

In a recent move, Huobi’s Thailand unit was said to be permanently closed from July 1 as the regulators revoked its license. The regulators found found fault with management structure of the Thailand unit as it did not comply with the rules.

Earlier in the month, crypto exchange Gemini announced it is cutting 10% of its staff. Also, top exchange Coinbase extend its hiring pause “for the foreseeable future.” It cited the current market conditions and ongoing business prioritization efforts as the reason behind the pause.