Australia has joined bybit and Vauld in slashing 30% of its staff amid a worsening of the winter's crypto payments, according to Decrypt.
The move will see Banxa reduce its staff from 260 to 160 people, with 70 people affected by the downsizing.
Banxa must take decisive actions to reduce costs now, or else our company won't be able to succeed over the long run, Holger Arians told the company's staff.
The operator blamed the declining trading volumes and pointed out that its hyper-growth model was no longer sustainable over the past 18 months. Arians said that our employee costs are too high to be able to continue to operate in our current structure.
We were working to manage large trading volumes and invest in new products and new markets to support our partners. With the economic downturn, we had to manage costs quickly and reduce our focus to core revenue-generating initiatives, according to Arians.
The Melbourne-based firm said it had fears of a looming recession and saw its market capitalization nearly halve in a matter of days. It's the latest company to lay off staff after Coinbase slashed a fifth of its workforce, Bitso, and Gemini by 10%, BlockFi by 20% and BitMex by 25%.
The option to use the service for cryptocurrencies in Turkey through a local bank transfer was introduced by Banxa earlier this month. In 2021, Banxa was listed on the Canadian stock exchange and was reported to be eying an IPO on the Nasdaq, which the ongoing bear market has now been postponed.