Ledger, a company making hardware “wallets” for crypto investors, will lay off 12% of its workforce as it conserves resources to weather a protracted industry downturn.
(Bloomberg) — Ledger, a company making hardware “wallets” for crypto investors, will lay off 12% of its workforce as it conserves resources to weather a protracted industry downturn.
“Macroeconomic headwinds are limiting our ability to generate revenue,” Ledger’s Chief Executive and Chairman Pascal Gauthier, said in an email sent to staff on Thursday. “We must continue to make decisions for the longevity of the business.”
A spokesperson for Ledger confirmed the layoffs, but declined to provide further details.
Climbing interest rates and regulatory pressure have kept the crypto industry in turmoil, with trading volumes drying up, funding slumping, and once popular parts of the industry — like non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — experiencing a significant drop in prices and interest. Some 95% of more than 73,000 NFT collections are now essentially worthless, according to researchers at dappGambl.
As a result, large exchanges, trading firms, service providers and other crypto companies have been forced to slash costs and reduce their workforce. Blockchain data firm Chainalysis laid off 15% of staff earlier this week, while blockchain technology company R3 fired just over a fifth of its workforce last month.
Founded in 2014, Ledger is a leading maker of secure hardware devices used to store so-called private keys, the passwords giving users access to their blockchain assets. The fall of crypto exchanges like FTX as well as numerous large scale hacks last year made users jittery about the safety of their holdings, leading to an uptick in sales for Ledger and its competitors.
Earlier this year, the company raised about €100 million ($109 million) in a funding round that valued it at €1.3 billion, roughly the same price-tag it was given by investors during the 2021 bull market. Ledger says its devices are used to store more than 20% of the world’s cryptocurrencies and 30% of the world’s non-fungible tokens.
Read More: Crypto’s First Year After the FTX Blowup: ‘It’s Been Miserable’
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