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

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 staffers who have refused to draw salaries in its HT native coin.

It is noteworthy, that Justin Sun, the TRON founder-turned-advisor for the exchange last year, has denied that Huobi was looking to let go of its employees, the South China Morning Post said in its report.

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

While clarity on Huobi’s situation remains awaited from its senior authorities, the market waves have destabilised the position of Genesis, which is a New York, US-based crypto lending firm.

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.

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