Apart from the current bear market, Indian crypto exchanges have had to contend with a harsh new tax regime and a pullback from banks and payment processors, which have caused trading volumes to plummet. ET reported on April 12 that trading volumes
on crypto exchanges had hit a six-month low.
Nischal Shetty, cofounder of WazirX, confirmed to ET that the company has slowed down hiring for the time being.
“The top reasons for the slowdown are bearish markets, regulatory uncertainty, and the current banking issues. We are working on solving for regulatory uncertainty and banking issues as we speak. But until then the Indian crypto industry will continue to see downward pressure in terms of business growth. This has led to a slowdown in hiring,” Shetty said.
Sathvik Vishwanath, cofounder and CEO of Unocoin, told ET that the company decided to change its hiring plans in the past couple of weeks.
“Like other tech-based companies, we have also become cautious with our hiring. We are concentrating on filling up crucial roles in the organisation as oppossed to those meant to build in redundancies. No layoffs are planned in the foreseeable future,” Vishwanath said.
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The developments come soon after Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, announced a hiring freeze and even rescinded accepted offers across its global offices. In April, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong had announced the company planned to triple its workforce to 1,000 in India.
L J Brock, chief people officer, Coinbase, announced in a blog post on June 3 that “in response to the current market conditions and ongoing business prioritization efforts, we will extend our hiring pause for both new and backfill roles for the foreseeable future and rescind a number of accepted offers”.
In response to ET’s query on whether Coinbase would pause its hiring efforts in India, the company said, “this applies globally.”