Australian cryptocurrency operator Banxa called an all-staff meeting to declare the 250-strong company had grown too quickly, and would need to shed 30 per cent of its employees.
“Banxa must take decisive actions to reduce costs now, or else our company won’t be able to succeed over the long run,” CEO Holger Arians said.
Banxa is a cryptocurrency payments operator, facilitating the purchase, trade, and sale of crypto assets. With the entire industry in freefall, and shares in the company plunging 74 per cent in the past year, it has been forced to downsize.
A Banxa spokesperson reached out to ChannelNews with the following statement: “As a leaner, more focused company, Banxa can better prioritise higher margins and profitability in the face of industry headwinds.
“Banxa’s extensive payment rails and compliance infrastructure is increasingly valuable to creators and platforms in web2 and web3. Banxa is also a veteran company of multiple industry cycles, its financial performance is available to the public, and its balance sheet is strong.”
This statement echoes an email sent by Arians to staff.
“While we have made a number of budget cuts, our employee costs remain too high for us to be able to continue to operate in our current structure,” Arians wrote.
“We had hoped to make gradual adjustments to Banxa’s business, but macro conditions accelerated our timeline.
“This put even more pressure on Banxa’s leadership team to make necessary changes to our company’s cost structure.”
The company will shed 74 employees, to bring staff numbers down to 150.
“We were working to manage large trading volumes and investing in new products and new markets to support our partners. With the sudden economic downturn, we’ve had to very quickly manage costs and reduce our focus to core, revenue-generating initiatives,” Arians wrote.
“We are now entering what looks like a bear market, while it appears that the US could be entering a recession.
“Like many others in our industry [we] are anticipating another crypto winter, with trading volumes declining significantly.
“We saw Banxa’s market capitalisation nearly halve in a matter of days, and the forecast is that these conditions will most likely continue for another 12 months.”