The Huobi crypto exchange has become the latest to announce mass layoffs in 2023 amid growing troubles and uncertainty in cryptocurrency.
In the industry’s biggest layoff yet, Mark Zukerburg, Chief Executive of Meta, which is the Parent Company of Facebook, laid off more than 11,000 employees. Followed by disappointing earnings and a drop in revenue, due to some unfortunate business decisions and inaccurate forecasts, this radical move was the “last resort” the Giant Tech Company had; a lamenting Zuckerberg said while taking full responsibility and apologizing to the impacted people. Sadly, these layoffs and the long term hiring freeze strategy might have a negative long – term impact on the various Web 3 projects being undertaken by Meta.
The tech powerhouse, Meta, valued at over a trillion dollars last year, suffered a great fall due to its huge losses in the metaverse. Along with the timing and visuals not meeting standards, the VR platform couldn’t quite meet its customers’ expectations. Its meta currency, Meta Platforms Inc. ( $META ), currently priced at 96.47, indicates a whopping 71.23 % yearly decrease. Even the shares are currently at their lowest point as seen in the last five years.
With the ongoing turbulence in the crypto currency market, news like this could most possibly exacerbate the situation even more! Starting with the almost downfall of FTX due to a massive liquidity crunch, there we were witnessing layoffs left – right – and – center. Twitter laid off 75 % employees, Apple and Amazon initiated a hiring freeze, Snapchat laid off 20 % of its employees, Intel laid off 20 % of its employees and Microsoft has also started layoffs!
Moreover, with speculations about Alameda Research looking for liquidity ( to help FTX ), Solana went down and fell out of the top 10 crypto coins, with investors fearing that Alameda might dump its SOL shares to gain liquidity. All this because of FTX becoming insolvent and being acquired by its rival, Binance, which has made everyone overly cautious and on edge. On the other hand, there were rumors of KuCoin suspending its withdrawals, while Kraken and Coinbase also encountered some brief connectivity issues, sending waves of panic and discord all over the internet. While KuCoin assured that the delay in withdrawals were purely due to security reasons and that they are “here to stay”; and the Kraken and Coinbase network issues had also been resolved quickly, the downward, fearful and bearish market trend all this mayhem has caused might take a while now to rectify.
On the bright side, however, it is prudent to note that the first disruptive idea that Mark Zukerburg had, led to the arrival of the most popular social media app – Facebook, along – with the top messaging apps, Messenger and WhatsApp. Meta has also pioneered the integration of blockchain and NFT on social media, with Instagram users being given the opportunity to mint, display and trade NFTs. With a global Instagram user base of 1,386 billion, this recent development is quite likely to increase the adoption of digital assets among the general public.
