Another flagship digital currency company has announced its cutting staff due to the slide in bitcoin and crypto prices.
NFT marketplace OpenSea said yesterday it was cutting 20% of its staff due to the problems of the ‘crypto winter’.
Devin Finzer, chief executive, said in a tweet: “The reality is that we have entered an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic uncertainty and we need to prepare for the possibility of a prolonged downturn.”
OpenSea has also had its own issues other than just the downturn in the crypto market, including embarrassing hacks that have seen NFTs stolen and email addresses of vendors leaked, while a former executive was recently arrested for insider trading.
In February, OpenSea, which claims to be the largest NFT vendor, raised US$300mln giving it a valuation of $13.3bn but new competitors have started to enter the space.
Coinbase recently opened an NFT marketplace earlier this year, but it too has just announced a round of lay-offs due to the slide in digital currency values, while crypto exchange Celsius has just gone into administration.