Indian exchange WazirX has cut 40 percent of its total workforce, the company said in a statement. The company said the layoffs were made to weather the bearish week for the crypto market. It said its priority is to be financially stable and continue to serve its customers.
A week ago, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) froze the bank accounts of the crypto exchange firm.
CoinDesk. In a statement to the company Told“As India’s No. 1 Exchange, our priority is to be financially stable and continue to serve our customers.”
“To achieve this, we had to reduce our workforce for the crypto winter season. This situation is similar to the tough times faced by the industry in 2018; at that time, we doubled down on our innovative P2P engine. The company added that the crypto industry operates in cycles and a bear market is essentially followed by a spectacular bull market.
The firm will continue to build on and focus on the needs of our clients and the company is confident that it will strengthen further when the bull market hits, the company said.
It is said that 70 employees or 40 percent of the 150 employees of the exchange were laid off. The fired workers were told they would be paid for 45 days and would not be required to report for work.
“The crypto market is in the grip of a bear market due to the current global economic downturn,” the firm said on Saturday.
“The Indian crypto industry has its own unique problems with respect to taxes, regulations and banking access. This has led to a dramatic drop in volume across all Indian crypto exchanges.”
Recently, the Indian exchange has faced several problems including an online dispute between WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao over whether Binance is the parent company of the Indian exchange.
WazirX is an India-based bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Mumbai, which offers an auto-matching P2P (peer-to-peer) engine. It was launched in March 2018. It is run by Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre and Siddharth Menon.
Data from April 1 to September 14 showed a drop in daily trading volume on WazirX and CoinDCX. These two firms are the two largest crypto exchanges in India.
