The economic downturn led to the sacking of almost 40% of the workforce in the Indian crypto exchange WazirX. As many as 50 to 70 of 150 lost their jobs, CoinDesk reported citing sources.
The employees who were fired were informed on Friday that they would get compensation of 45 days following termination and would not be required to report to work, and their access was withdrawn.
“The crypto market has been in the grip of a bear market because of the current global economic slowdown. The Indian crypto industry has had its unique problems concerning taxes, regulations, and banking access. This has led to a dramatic fall in volumes in all Indian crypto exchanges,” WazirX said in a statement, reported CoinDesk.
“As India’s No 1. exchange, our priority is to be financially stable and to continue serving our customers. To achieve this, we’ve had to reduce our staff to weather the crypto winter. This situation is similar to the trying times the industry faced in 2018; at that time, we doubled down and built our innovative P2P engine,” the statement said.
The employees were laid off from across departments, including customer support, HR, and other departments. Managers, Analysts, and Associate Managers/Team leaders were also among those who lost their jobs, said one of the sources.
Another sacked employee told the entire public policy and communication team was laid off.
“The company was never really forthcoming or transparent with its financial position, either when it was doing well or now,” said another employee who was fired.
WazirX daily trading volumes have been rolling down from 478 million in October 2021 to 1.5 million in October 2022, according to CoinGecko data.
WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty was embroiled in a public spat with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao concerning Binance claiming not to be WazirX’s parent company.
It was known that Binance acquired WazirX in November 2019 but a few hours after ED froze WazirX bank accounts, Changpeng Zhao tweeted that the largest exchange in the world in terms of daily trading volume “never—at any point—owned any shares of Zanmai Labs, the entity operating WazirX.”
It led to a Twitter spat between WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty and Zhao on August 6 and 7 this year. Binance further removed the off-chain fund transfer, transactions occurring outside the blockchain network and channel between WazirX and Binance.
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