Last year’s “crypto winter” resulted in a series of massive layoffs in the cryptocurrency market. Around the world, exchanges, managers, lending companies and others in the crypto sector have had to shut down much of their workforce in the face of the bearish scenario that has set in the industry. And Brazil was not left out of it. In fact, the country appears on the list of those who fired the most professionals in the digital assets market. São Paulo ranked seventh worldwide among the cities with the most layoffs. The data is from a recent survey, conducted by cryptocurrency data platform CoinGecko, and published this Friday (04).
Mass layoffs in the crypto market
As CoinGecko highlighted, these mass layoffs are a result of the crypto winter and troubled macroeconomic environment. To better analyze how this process took place in the world, CoinGecko examined the number of employees laid off at cryptocurrency companies in 2022 so far. Then, the platform grouped the data according to the location of the company’s headquarters. According to the survey, nearly half of all layoffs in the industry took place in the cities of San Francisco, Dubai and New York. Companies based in these locations accounted for 49.8% of laid-off employees worldwide. San Francisco led with 1,142 year-to-date layoffs (YTD). Globally, this equates to 25.7% of worldwide layoffs in the crypto sector. “This can be attributed to the density of cryptocurrency companies based in San Francisco, which has been a high-tech hub alongside Silicon Valley,” the research highlighted. Then comes Dubai with 609 employees laid off from cryptocurrency companies in the year. That is about 13.7% of cryptocurrency layoffs worldwide. New York follows shortly after with 463 laid off employees, or 10.4% of cryptocurrency layoffs globally. After New York comes: Singapore with 368 crypto employees laid off in 2022, Vienna with 270 and New Jersey with 250. Then in seventh place is Brazil’s most populous city, São Paulo, with 190 crypto workers laid off in the year. year. According to data from layoffs.fyi, used in the survey, in São Paulo, the crypto company that fired the most was 2TM, the company behind cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin.
The USA was the country that laid off the most
Worldwide, the country that laid off the most crypto professionals was the United States, with 2,080 layoffs (46.7%). “While it is not surprising that US cities took the most places in the top 15 cities for crypto layoffs, it is worth noting that there was a diversity of cities. This suggests rapid development and growth of the digital asset sector beyond the West during the 2020 and 2021 bull market,” the survey reads. For the study, the layoffs in the crypto sector that were publicly disclosed were analyzed. The reporting period runs from January 1, 2022 to November 1, 2022. The number of laid-off employees has been grouped by city, according to where companies have officially stated on their website, LinkedIn profile, or public announcements.
