Two crypto firms — Genesis and Huobi — have grabbed the attention of the crypto community, after reportedly decided to cut down on their respective work forces. Genesis is a crypto-lending platform whereas Huobi is a crypto exchange platform. The companies are evidently trying to cut the cost around their business operations in the midst of the ongoing market slump. The overall crypto market situation, that has remained stuck to the global valuation of within $820 billion (roughly Rs. 67,76,234 crore) for weeks now, failed to show any major improvement in the first week of 2023.
In the case of Huobi, its native HT token dropped by eleven percent in the last 24 hours and slipped by 30 percent in the last one month. As per a CoinDesk report, Huobi is terminating 20 percent of its work force. The affected staffers mare reportedly those who have refused to draw salaries in its HT native coin.
The company confirmed its decision hours after Justin Sun, the TRON founder-turned-advisor for the exchange last year, denied that Huobi was looking to let go of its employees.
On Twitter people familiar with the matter claimed that the Seychelles-based crypto exchange is facing the impacts of a slumped market and has also closed internal communications.
To translate:
Rumors of trouble at Huobi are rampant in Japanese and Korean crypto twitter. They claim internal comms have been closed and large layoffs are imminent.
Justin Sun is at the center of these rumors as he took over an active role in the company late last year. pic.twitter.com/KetFhHjcVT
— Stephen TCG | DeFi Dojo (@phtevenstrong) January 6, 2023
Hmmm…. Huobi allegedly having some internal employee issues and #TRX started to nuke…
Not a great day for good old Justin… (who knows, he might be the one cashing out lol) pic.twitter.com/aMUrzOx2Qr
— Devchart :male-technologist::skin-tone-2: (@devchart) January 6, 2023
On December 15th, Huobi saw an inflow of $87.9m. However, since then, it has experienced a total of $204.65m in outflows, with $75.1m occurring in the last 24 hours alone pic.twitter.com/3ADObzSe5l
— DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) January 6, 2023
Huobi is not the only company suffering amid rough market waves. The ongoing market slumphas also destabilised the position of Genesis, which is a New York, US-based crypto lending firm now mulling filing for bankruptcy.
The company in November, Genesis had asked for a loan of $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,263 crore) from investors, after the downfall of the FTX crypto exchange.
To protect its business from going bankrupt for now, Genesis has laid off 30 percent of its work force, making for sixty people to keep its business afloat.
Between 2021 and 2022, the overall crypto sector lost over $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,65,74,700 crore). The Russia-Ukraine war, the recession that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, repeated hack attacks, and the collapse of promising crypto projects like LUNA and FTX slashed investor engagement in the sector.
The industry may take a while to recover from the ongoing crypto winter, industry analysts have predicted.
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