The global crypto market, that is currently undergoing a slump, could be losing community members who do not have an appetite for risky investments at the time. This impact of the slowdown has been highlighted by crypto exchange CoinSwitch after it laid off 44 employees earlier this month from its customer support team due a drop in customer queries. The company is now among many facing the brunt of dealing with volatile assets such as cryptocurrencies, especially in the lack of rules and regulations dedicated to overseeing the sector.
Founded in 2017, CoinSwitch is a Bengaluru-based crypto exchange that claims to be catering to over 18 million users. “Queries from our users have dropped to just ten percent of what they used to be around a year ago. People who have been reaching out to us, usually tend to have questions regarding their KYC verifications,” a company official told Gadgets 360.
“We continuously evaluate our business to stay competitive, prioritizing innovation, value, and service for our customers. To that end, we right-sized our customer support team to align with the present volume of customer queries on our platform. This impacted the roles of 44 members of our customer support team, who voluntarily resigned from their roles after a detailed discussion with their managers earlier this month,” a company spokesperson said on Tuesday.
“Over the last year, many support team members have been absorbed into other functions based on the suitability of their skills for the other roles. We are extending all our support to the impacted employees. As and when volumes grow and we open new roles, we will be happy to welcome back those impacted.”
Back-to-back interest rate hikes in the US as well as the consecutive targeting of crypto players like Binance and Coinbase by the SEC in the US, have also acted as factors that slowed down the market momentum for cryptocurrencies in recent months. Currently, the overall cap of the crypto market stands at $1.05 trillion (roughly Rs. 86,80,402 crore), hanging by a thread to the psychologically significant trillion-dollar mark.
Earlier this month, India’s CoinDCX crypto exchange announced the layoff of 12 percent of its workforce, blaming the country’s tax regime for pushing investors away.
The crypto exchange, in its official statement, said that India’s TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) deductions on each crypto transaction has slowed down its business, especially during the ongoing bear market. A total of 71 people lost their jobs at CoinDCX during the recent round of layoffs.
On an international level, KuCoin, Binance, Genesis, and Huobi also laid off staff members between January and August this year succumbing to market pressure.