BitPanda Bitcoin Trading Platform Makes Cuts In Its Workforce

The BitPanda Bitcoin trading platform decided to make cuts in its workforce due to a variety of reasons such as excessive growth rate and changing market sentiment so let’s read more today in our latest Bitcoin news.

As the crypto winter sets in, Web3 companies are in a difficult position of cutting staff and during a company call, Austria-based BitPanda announced that it will be reducing its workforce from 1000 employees to 730:

“We are committed to Bitpanda’s mission, therefore we need to take decisive actions now. The implications hurt: we need to let part of our team go and scale down to a target organizational size of about 730 people.”

The BitPanda Bitcoin trading platform joined a growing list of crypto companies that announced layoffs in the wake of the downturn. Other companies slashed employees including Bitso, Buenbit, BlockFi, Coinbase, and Crypto.com which cut up to 18% of its workforce and rescinded employment offers to the new hires. In a Slack thread included in the post, BitPanda cited changing market sentiment and rising inflation with concerns of a looming recession enhancing:

“There’s lots of uncertainty in the financial markets right now and, while we do know that the industry is cyclical, nobody knows when the market sentiment will change.”

Founded in October 2014 by Eric Demuth, Christian Trummer, and Paul Klanschek, BitPanda is a platform for digital assets including Ethereum, Bitcoin, and commodities like gold and silver. The company is backed by Peter Thiel who led a series of fundraisers that total over $500 million for the European exchange between September 2020 and August 2021 and by August, BitPanda had a valuation of $4.1 billion. The road has been harsh so far with the company acknowledging that it was struggling with growing pains and the blog post titled “The Way Forward” signed by the founders, explained that the speed at which they are hiring was a mistake:

“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.”

Cost management is essential and the founders continued with some fundamental operational changes being necessary. They added:

“These changes include prioritizing safety and compliance, user experience, education, and community, and deprioritizing everything else.”

The company listed support options for the employees affected by the downsizing like help finding new employment, references, and mental health support. The post noted:

 “While this is a tough decision to make, it was nonetheless necessary to make sure we’re robustly well-capitalized to navigate the storm and get out of it financially healthy—no matter how long it takes for markets to recover—without compromising on product quality and customer experience.”