Bitcoin is booming and the crypto industry is making a comeback—but layoffs keep happening lately.
The latest firm to make such a move is American Bitcoin miner Foundry. Based in Rochester, New York, Foundry confirmed that it has cut 16% of its staff. The company is one of the biggest U.S. Bitcoin miners.
It said in a statement to Decrypt that it “made the difficult decision to reduce Foundry’s workforce, resulting in layoffs across multiple teams.” The firm added that it had also cut a small team in India.
Blockspace first reported word of layoffs, though Foundry said a smaller number of roles were affected than originally claimed.
“We recently made the strategic decision to focus Foundry on our core business—operating the number-one Bitcoin mining pool in the world and growing our site operations business—while we supported the development of DCG’s newest subsidiaries, including Yuma and the spinout of Foundry’s successful self-mining business,” it said in a statement.
Yuma is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform and Foundry subsidiary. Digital Currency Group (DCG), which owns Foundry, said in a letter to shareholders after the U.S. election that its mining operation would work best as a “standalone business.” Foundry also provides staking services for other digital assets like Ethereum.
What the Next Level of Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Will Bring
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is set to jump tomorrow as the “work” part of proof of work shifts into yet another tier. The price of the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap (despite dropping today) has been on a roll this year—it’s up over 75% since the start of 2023. Another metric that keeps rising is the asset’s mining difficulty, which is expected to increase from 47.89 trillion hashes to 48.53 hashes tomorrow, according to CoinWarz data. Bitcoin mining is the process of using powerful comp...
Despite surging crypto prices, major companies across the space—including Ethereum giant Consensys, top digital asset exchange Kraken, and New York platform dYdX—have cut headcount this year. Experts told Decrypt before the election that regulatory uncertainty played a part in companies slimming down.
Bitcoin mining is a particularly difficult industry. Rewards for miners get slashed every four years, and it becomes more expensive for companies to run their businesses.
Bitcoin Is Surging—So Why All the Crypto Layoffs?
The American crypto industry had plenty to celebrate this week: Bitcoin came within inches of reaching its all-time high price, crypto ETFs rang in new milestones on Wall Street, and next week’s presidential election appears poised to boost the ecosystem regardless of who wins. You’d hardly notice, then, that it was one of the worst weeks ever for America’s top crypto employers. On Tuesday, Ethereum software giant Consensys laid off 20% of its global workforce. Hours later, DYdX, a New York-bas...
Bitcoin mining is the process of using powerful computers to verify transactions on the biggest crypto network.
Back in the day, over 14 years ago, it was possible to do the process on a home PC. But as the network has grown, so has the industry—and the competition. Miners are typically now large operations using server farms and a lot of electricity.
Bitcoin Mining Revenue Rises as Public Firms Reap Sizable Stock Gains: JP Morgan
As the price of Bitcoin swelled past $99,500 last month, some publicly traded Bitcoin miners saw their stock prices soar, according to a research note released by JP Morgan Monday. The collective market capitalization of 14 Bitcoin miners tracked by JP Morgan increased a “staggering” 52% month-over-month to $36.2 billion, the note stated. Among November’s best performers, analysts noted that Singapore-based Bitdeer’s stock surged 83% to $14.27 during the period. This year, Bitcoin miners have fa...
Miners receive newly minted Bitcoins for their work, and as the years go by, the process of producing coins becomes more difficult—and even more energy-consuming.
However, JP Morgan said that Bitcoin mining revenue grew in November amid the surging price of BTC, which came within a few hundred dollars of the $100,000 mark for the first time late last month.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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