Genesis, Huobi Resort to Staff Layoffs as Market Pressure Continues to Intensify: Reports

Between 2021 and 2022, the overall crypto sector lost over $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,65,74,700 crore).

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 6 January 2023 13:31 IST

Genesis, Huobi Resort to Staff Layoffs as Market Pressure Continues to Intensify: Reports

Photo Credit: Unsplash/ Maxim Hopman

The crypto industry will take some time to recover from the ongoing slump, analysts predict

Highlights

Genesis has confirmed the layoff of 60 staffers
Huobi advisor Justin Sun has denied lay off reports
Clarity on Huobi’s situation remains awaited

Two crypto firms — Genesis and Huobi — have grabbed the attention of the crypto community, after reportedly decided to cut down on their respective work forces. Genesis is a crypto-lending platform whereas Huobi is a crypto exchange platform. The companies are evidently trying to cut the cost around their business operations in the midst of the ongoing market slump. The overall crypto market situation, that has remained stuck to the global valuation of within $820 billion (roughly Rs. 67,76,234 crore) for weeks now, failed to show any major improvement in the first week of 2023.

In the case of Huobi, its native HT token dropped by eleven percent in the last 24 hours and slipped by 30 percent in the last one month. As per a CoinDesk report, Huobi is terminating 20 percent of its work force. The affected staffers mare reportedly those who have refused to draw salaries in its HT native coin.

The company confirmed its decision hours after Justin Sun, the TRON founder-turned-advisor for the exchange last year, denied that Huobi was looking to let go of its employees.

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On Twitter people familiar with the matter claimed that the Seychelles-based crypto exchange is facing the impacts of a slumped market and has also closed internal communications.

To translate:

Rumors of trouble at Huobi are rampant in Japanese and Korean crypto twitter. They claim internal comms have been closed and large layoffs are imminent.

Justin Sun is at the center of these rumors as he took over an active role in the company late last year. pic.twitter.com/KetFhHjcVT
— Stephen TCG | DeFi Dojo (@phtevenstrong) January 6, 2023

Hmmm.... Huobi allegedly having some internal employee issues and #TRX started to nuke...

Not a great day for good old Justin... (who knows, he might be the one cashing out lol) pic.twitter.com/aMUrzOx2Qr
— Devchart :male-technologist::skin-tone-2: (@devchart) January 6, 2023

On December 15th, Huobi saw an inflow of $87.9m. However, since then, it has experienced a total of $204.65m in outflows, with $75.1m occurring in the last 24 hours alone pic.twitter.com/3ADObzSe5l
— DefiLlama.com (@DefiLlama) January 6, 2023

Huobi is not the only company suffering amid rough market waves. The ongoing market slumphas also destabilised the position of Genesis, which is a New York, US-based crypto lending firm now mulling filing for bankruptcy.

The company in November, Genesis had asked for a loan of $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,263 crore) from investors, after the downfall of the FTX crypto exchange.

To protect its business from going bankrupt for now, Genesis has laid off 30 percent of its work force, making for sixty people to keep its business afloat.

Between 2021 and 2022, the overall crypto sector lost over $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,65,74,700 crore). The Russia-Ukraine war, the recession that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, repeated hack attacks, and the collapse of promising crypto projects like LUNA and FTX slashed investor engagement in the sector.

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The industry may take a while to recover from the ongoing crypto winter, industry analysts have predicted.

Will crypto tax hurt the industry in India? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Genesis, Huobi, Crypto Winter

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More