Vienna-based Bitpanda is the latest crypto player to make job cuts, informing staffers that it will axe hundreds of positions as it face up to a dramatically altered market.
Digital investment platform Bitpanda says that it will bring its headcount down to about 730 from the more than 1000 it is listed as currently having on LinkedIn. It is also rescinding some accepted job offers.
The move comes less than a year after Bitpanda saw its valuation hit $4.1 billion after a $263 million round led by Valar Ventures.
In a message to staff, posted on its blog, the firm's founders says: "We need to make fundamental changes in how we operate and sharpen our focus by getting back to the basics, prioritising safety and compliance, user experience, education and community, while deprioritizing everything else."
While citing the crypto winter and broader global economic problems, the company acknowledges its own failures.
"In keeping up with the industry, our team’s growth rate has been too high...We reached a point where more people joining didn’t make us more effective, but created coordination overheads instead, particularly in this new market reality. Looking back now, we realise that our hiring speed was not sustainable. That was a mistake."
Affected employees will get packages that "go beyond" employment law as well as one-on-one coaching with talent acquisition partners, references and mental health support.
Bitpanda is far from alone: recently Coinbase set out plans to reduce its workforce by 18%, BlockFi by 20%, Crypto.com by five per cent and Gemini by 10%. However, some crypto firms -Binance, Kraken and OKX - have bucked the trend and committed to hiring sprees.