British cryptocurrency exchange Coinfloor is laying off the majority of its staff, news outlet Financial News reported Oct. 8.
Coinfloor is a London-based digital currency trading platform founded in 2013. Coinfloor is reportedly the oldest crypto exchange in the U.K. and is focused on institutional and sophisticated investors. According to CoinMarketCap, Coinfloor’s daily trading volume is around $1 million at press time.
Two people familiar with the matter told Financial News that Coinfloor is laying off the greater part of its approximately 40 employees. The exchange’s CEO Obi Nwosu told Financial News that Coinfloor has “seen significant change in trade volume across the market.” Nwosu added:
“Coinfloor is currently undergoing a business restructure to focus on our competitive advantages in the marketplace and to best serve our clients. As part of this restructure, we are making some staff changes and redundancies.”
Nwosu told Financial News that the exchange has traded $1 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) in the past 12 months.
Last month, there were rumors that crypto exchange Kraken was slashing staff in its unit in Halifax, Canada. However, the exchange subsequently denied the rumors, stating that “we can confirm that we are not shutting down any operations in any specific place…”
News and rumors of layoffs in the crypto space follow a bearish market this year. In the first quarter of 2018, the crypto market fell following the Bitcoin (BTC) price slump by nearly 70 percent from its mid-December 2017 peak of $20,000.
In January, the BTC price dropped to $9,724, which is less than half of where it had been a month previously. In February, BTC was down to $5,922. However, in March, the price broke the $9,000 mark again.
At press time, BTC is trading at $6,681, up 1.56 percent on the day and almost 7 percent over the last month, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin Price Index.
