Cryptocurrency trading platform Amber Group claims it has laid off up to 10% of its workforce so far this year due to sluggish market conditions.
Tiantian Kullander, the co-founder of Amber Group, said:
“Given market conditions, we are currently reducing the number of lower priority positions and increasing the number of employees in higher priority positions.”
Amber, founded in 2018 by five former Morgan Stanley traders, has tripled its valuation since mid-2021, according to Bloomberg.
It has been a brutal period for the crypto sector since May this year. Digital tokens have fallen across the board, and at the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin trades falls around $22,181.91 per coin.
The ongoing bear market has struck a significant blow to the industry’s labor market. Many major firms, including US-based exchanges Gemini, BlockFi, Coinbase, Singapore-based crypto exchange Bybit, Austria-based Bitpanda, and Mexican exchange Bitso, have recently laid off multiple employees. Despite this, the wave of job cuts appears to be gaining momentum.
Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte and other investors valued cryptocurrency-trading platform Amber Group at $3 billion in a funding round on February 22.
According to Wu, Amber may raise another funding round later in 2022, followed by an initial public offering (IPO) in the second half of 2023, most likely in the U.S.
Last month, Cryptocurrency financial services startup Amber Group has announced that it will expand its retail trading operations into Brazil through a retail platform called WhaleFin.
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