Kraken Lays Off Staff, How Come?

Crypto exchange Kraken is facing difficulties amid the crypto downturn and taking steps to stay afloat.

Sasha Markevich

Dec 13, 2022 - 1 min read

Following a wave of job cuts in the tech industry, including for example Meta and Twitter, Kraken announced that it is laying off 30% of its global staff:

“We’re reducing our global workforce by approximately 1,100 people, or 30 percent, in order to adapt to current market conditions.”

Earlier this year Kraken was way more optimistic about the market downturn:

“We have not adjusted our hiring plan, and we do not intend to make any layoffs. We have over 500 roles to fill during the remainder of the year, and believe bear markets are fantastic at weeding out the applicants chasing hype from the true believers in our mission,” - says a company’s blog post from June 15.

Kraken is now the 26th exchange by trading volume according to CoinMarketCup, while just a few months ago it was 5th. Besides we wrote earlier that Kraken might be under federal investigation for violation of sanctions against Iran. On Oct 28 Kraken agreed to pay a fine of more than $362,000 “to settle its potential civil liability for apparent violations of sanctions”. Also, an interesting fact: the announcement about layoffs is signed by Jesse Powell, co-Founder and CEO of Kracken who resigned in September this year.

All of this can be bad signs for the exchange which is now the third in exchanges rating by CoinMarketCup. We hope that Kraken won’t be the next one to fail, but that wouldn’t be a surprise. Stay tuned, we continue to observe!