It should be noted that signs of stabilisation in the cryptocurrency industry are not only evident in the labour market. As it turned out after the end of February, the total trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges was the equivalent of $878 billion. This is up from the last two months, indicating a renewed interest from traders in cryptocurrencies and an increase in their activity in general.

The volume of NFT transactions based on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed the billion dollar mark in February 2023. This has not been seen since May 2022.

The positive trend is also noticeable for Bitcoin miners’ returns. It stood at $613 million, the highest since September 2022.

Finally, in February 2023, total assets under management for investment cryptocurrencies rose to $28.3 billion. Again, this is the best result since May 2022.

What’s happening in cryptocurrencies

Cointelegraph journalists compiled statistics on layoffs based on public reports of employee layoffs. At least twelve companies made layoffs during the 28 days of February. Each of them laid off up to a hundred people, while in January reports many cryptocurrency companies reduced their staff by hundreds of people.

The cuts included analytics companies around blockchain, blockchain developers and software creators, and digital asset platforms themselves. For example, fresh layoffs occurred at Elliptic and Messari, which cut 10 and 15 percent of their staff, respectively.

Messari founder Ryan Selkis reported on Twitter that the staff cuts were due to a “market trend” and restructuring of internal teams. It is also known that at least 27 employees left the company in February. Here is one of Selkis’ messages regarding the company’s staffing policy.

We still plan to hire for a number of open positions and will continue to work towards better transparency and data standards in cryptocurrency. The market trend in cryptocurrencies and technology in general has led to a difficult decision. But I am confident that this move will put us on a firmer footing in the long run.


Note that many of the layoffs in cryptocurrencies over the past few months have occurred not only because of market downturns, but also because of too much hiring during a bullish trend. For example, Dapper Labs, known for its CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot collections, has grown from 100 to 600 people in less than two years. And that's a very high growth rate indeed, which runs the risk of reducing work efficiency. Still, interaction between new employees and departments in such numbers is unlikely to be ideal.


The record number of redundancies was set by Dapper Labs and the Polygon platform – they cut around 20 per cent of their staff as a result of internal restructuring. In a tweet dated February 21, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal explained that the move was the result of the consolidation of all internal teams at Polygon Labs, which resulted in the reduction of hundreds of jobs.

This news has caused outrage in the cryptocurrency community. The fact is that in early 2022, the Polygon project attracted $450 million in investments, $200 million of which have already been used. And that seems like an odd approach to using the funds, since Polygon's management is known for its contracts with big brands like Starbucks, for which it has to shell out a lot of money. Perhaps that money should have been spent on ensuring financial stability and protecting its own employees, rather than trying to create a hype within a niche.

Cryptocurrency recruiter Neil Dundon, who specializes in human resources for cryptocurrency companies, confirmed that the negative trend of cryptocurrency employee layoffs is accompanied by a similar trend in the entire IT sector. The situation is due to panic in anticipation of a recession in the U.S. amid high inflation, which, however, in recent months is still declining.

Data from Layoffs.fyi, which monitors layoffs in the blockchain industry, shows that 24,572 employees were laid off in 129 technology companies in February. In January, the corresponding figure was 84,414 employees from 268 tech companies.

We believe that as the macro economy stabilizes, the crypto labor market situation will improve one way or another. That will require Fed officials to stop raising the benchmark key rate and thereby signal that the economy is stabilizing. Whether that will happen in 2023 is unclear, as US banking officials have previously hinted at a willingness to continue raising rates, albeit at a slower pace. However, the situation could change rather quickly and it is better to follow the meetings of Fed representatives and forecasts of various bankers.