According to a report released by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), a Bitcoin services firm, has reduced its staff strength by nearly 33%. The announcement was initially made on September 22, 2022, and the slash affected nearly 110 NYDIG employees.
The company is currently trying to reduce its workforce and expenses and focus more on profitable businesses. The NYDIG was established in 2017 and is a Stone Ridge Holdings subsidiary. The company offers services like Bitcoin trading, brokerage, custody, and asset management services to institutional investors registered on their platform. The firm is also recognized as one of the leading institutional-grade Bitcoin firms in the world.
This sudden slash comes after the Group’s former CEO (Robert Gutmann) and President (Yan Zhao) resigned from their roles earlier this month. Nate Conrad and Tejas Shah will now replace them as President and CEO, respectively. The change in power could also be one of the reasons for the slash.
NYDIG And The Crypto Bear Market
According to NYDIG’s last year’s financial statement, it raised $1 billion in December 2021 with a valuation of over $7 billion. However, the firm intends to use the funds raised to keep developing its institutional-grade Bitcoin platform.
The company wants to add features like asset tokenization, smart contracts functionality, and Lightning Network payments for its users. NYDIG also filed with the SEC, revealing that it secured $720 million that will be used to improve its Institutional Bitcoin Fund. The company added that a total of 59 Investors participated in the fundraising. NYDIG also said it would focus on pushing investments to North America for its BTC mining franchise.
Other top Bitcoin and crypto companies have already reduced the number of their staff this year. This is coming as the crypto market continues to be bearish, with the rising inflation affecting their businesses negatively. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have reduced in value since 2022, causing many crypto companies, traders, and investors to suffer huge losses.
Some crypto companies affected by the crypto winter include BlockFi, Mercado Bitcoin, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Robinhood, Gemini, and Immutable. However, NYDIG claims that its financial record is “the strongest it’s ever been.” It explained that its BTC balance reached an all-time high in the third quarter of 2022. This increase is nearly a 100% rise compared to last year. But its yet to publish its Q3 2022 quarter financial report, in which it expects an increase in revenue.
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