‘Crypto winter’ freezes hiring at Gemini and Coinbase after Terra crash and Bitcoin slump

euronews.com:

Crypto winter is coming - or perhaps it is already here - as the last month has shown the industry has been frostbitten.

Cryptocurrencies are known for their volatility, but the wild price swings were made worse in the wake of the TerraUSD and Luna meltdown, which is estimated to have wiped half a trillion dollars off the sector’s market capitalisation.

The billionaire Bitcoin twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss said in a blogpost on Thursday that the industry is already in a “contraction phase” known as “crypto winter,” which has been “further compounded by the current macroeconomic and geopolitical turmoil”.

As such, they announced they would be cutting 10 per cent of its staff at Gemini, the US-based cryptocurrency exchange they founded eight years ago. It is the first time the company has cut jobs.

Gemini has around 1,033 staff, according to PitchBook, which would mean about 100 of them will be impacted by the layoffs.

Gemini is not the only company to suffer from the after-effects of the crypto crash.

Crypto exchange Coinbase, which reported a 27 per cent fall in first-quarter revenue, has now extended its hiring freeze “for the foreseeable future”.

Fintech companies BitMEX and Robinhood have also recently cut staff.

The term “crypto winter” refers to a period of flat trading after a price crash.

The last crypto winter was from early 2018 until mid-2020 as crypto prices dropped and stayed down.

What has caused the latest crypto crash?

Even before the Terra USD and Luna crash, the most popular cryptocurrency was already in trouble.

Bitcoin has lost around 60 per cent of its value since reaching an all-time high of $69,000 (€64,000) in November 2021. At the time of publication, Bitcoin’s price hovered at around $30,000 (€27,000),