Coinbase-Funded ‘Vauld’ Sacks 30 Percent Workforce Amid Tense Market

Vauld crypto trading platform has laid-off 30 percent of its staff citing market uncertainty as a stirring reason. Funded by Coinbase, Vauld is headquartered in Singapore but most of its workforce reportedly operates from India. This means that amid the ongoing market slump in the crypto industry, Indians working in the sector have also begun to see job losses. Darshan Bathija, the co-founder and CEO of Vauld said it was their negligence when the company kept hiring in 2022, ignoring early signs of market slump.

The market cap of the crypto sector that stood at over $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,56,10,304 crore) around March this year, currently stands at $932 billion (roughly Rs. 72,95,882 crore), as per CoinMarketCap.

Recession fears coupled with the crash of crypto projects such as Terra wired a substantial amount of capital out of the crypto industry in recent months, making the slump more intense.

“It pains me to saw this, but last Friday was one of the most difficult days for Vauld and myself since we decided to reduce our headcount by about 30 percent. This is not a decision we take lightly but given the economic slowdown, we concluded that this was the right course of action,” Bathija said in a blog post.

As part of its cost-cutting efforts, senior Vauld executives will also be seeing 50 percent deductions in their respective salaries.

For those being let go, Vauld is paying them salaries for two months, extending a 12-month medical insurance, and helping them find other jobs in the sector.

“To the colleagues who we're parting ways with, I'm extremely grateful for your contributions towards helping Vauld serve over 800,000 clients, I'm sorry. We know that resilient companies are built during bear markets. We believe that these measures are necessary so that we're very strong in the long term,” the post noted.

In July 2021, four-year-old Vauld had raised $25 million (Rs 185 crore) in a Series A funding round. Coinbase joined its list of investors at the time.

Earlier this month, Coinbase itself announced the lay-off of 18 percent of its workforce in the backdrop of losses hitting the digital assets sector.

Taking full accountability of over-hiring, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that the company had onboarded too many members in recent months, that was now hindering the firm's efficiency.

Last week, Web3 firms, BlockFi and Crypto.com announced lay-offs from their respective companies.

“The next couple of months will likely see continued weakness in the markets as we expect investors to take a more cautionary stance in the management of their portfolios. The continuation of risk-off appetite follows the Fed's acknowledgment that a recession is ‘certainly a possibility', and that a soft landing is ‘very challenging',” the research team at CoinDCX told Gadgets360 predicting the near future of the crypto market.