Bitcoin Investment Firm Valkyrie Cuts Staff

Digital asset investment firm Valkyrie Investments has reportedly cut about one-third of its 23-person staff over the last few weeks, joining many other companies in the sector that have done the same. 

The two-year-old company said its operations have continued without disruption and that it will soon be launching a new product, Bloomberg reported Monday (Nov. 14). 

“Our management team did a thorough review of asset growth year to date and reviewed every employee’s role and contribution,” Valkyrie Investments CEO Leah Wald said, per the report. “Like many other companies in our industry, cuts needed to be made, and ours were limited to sales and marketing.” 

Valkyrie Investments did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment. 

This report comes four days after cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced 60 layoffs after having already cut 18% of its total full-time workforce in June. 

The most recent staff reductions at Coinbase were limited to the company’s recruiting and institutional onboarding teams, as the firm has lowered planned hiring needs and has completed its institutional onboarding backlog, Coinbase Director of Corporate & Global Communications Elliott Suthers said at the time. 

Even before last week’s FTX bankruptcy that included about 130 affiliated companies, crypto firms had been reducing their staff, according to the Bloomberg report. 

Other firms that have announced layoffs or seen employees depart in recent months include Digital Currency Group, Genesis, BlockFi, Crypto.com and Gemini Trust, the report stated. 

The turmoil in the crypto industry caused in part by the shaky economy should not be surprising, Wald told the Wall Street Journal in June. 

Crypto is traveling along the same road that tech stocks did during the dot-com era or silver in the days of the Hunt brothers, she said. 

“All assets at the end of the day follow the same trend,” Wald said at the time. “As much as we think crypto is a new asset class, it’s not.”