UK-founded crypto firm Blockchain.com lays off almost a third of workforce

UK-founded crypto brokerage Blockchain.com is set to cut 28% of its workforce as the so-called ‘crypto winter’ intensifies.

The firm, which was founded by British entrepreneur Ben Reeves in York in 2011, plans to let go around 110 employees, according to reports by news site Coindesk. It adds to the roughly 150 staff cut from the firm in July last year.

The announcement makes Blockchain.com the latest crypto firm to cut its headcount in 2023 after US-based exchanged Coinbase began a round of 950 layoffs earlier this week.

Over 30 tech firms have laid off a combined 20,743 staff since the beginning of the year, according to online redundancy tracker layoffs.fyi, adding to the more than 150,000 that were let go in 2022. At least 27,000 employees at crypto firms were made redundant last year, according to estimates from CoinDesk.

A Coinbase spokesperson said: “In the face of increasingly challenging economic conditions, we made the difficult decision to start redundancy processes with a group of provisionally selected employees in Europe to reduce the size of our teams to strengthen our business and ensure we can weather anything else that comes our way.”

Blockchain.com was valued at as much as $5.2 billion (£4.3 billion) in 2021 after a $100 committment from investment firm Baillie Gifford, leaving founder Reeves with a stake believed to be worth several hundred million pounds.

A Blockchain.com did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This story is being updated