Crypto.com Lays Off Hundreds of Employees as Market Tumbles – CNET [CNET]

The exchange’s move comes amid a prolonged slump for cryptocurrency assets.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said over the weekend that his cryptocurrency exchange will lay off 260 workers or about 5% of its corporate workforce. 

“Our approach is to stay focused on executing against our roadmap and optimizing for profitability as we do so, ” Marszalek wrote in a series of tweets Saturday. “That means making difficult and necessary decisions to ensure continued and sustainable growth for the long term by making targeted reductions of approximately 260 or 5% of our corporate workforce.” 

That means making difficult and necessary decisions to ensure continued and sustainable growth for the long term by making targeted reductions of approximately 260 or 5% of our corporate workforce.

— Kris | Crypto.com (@kris) June 11, 2022

In November, Crypto.com, a Singapore-based exchange, paid a reported $700 million for the naming rights of the former Staples Center in Los Angeles. It also invested heavily in advertising, with a ubiquitous campaign featuring actor Matt Damon.

The company’s layoffs are the latest sign of a downturn in the market, roiled by high inflation and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, fell to its lowest point since 2020 on Monday. This follows the May collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD, whose demise caused the cryptocurrency market to lose $200 billion in one day.