Another crypto startup in trouble: ShapeShift restructures for the future, fires a third of its team

Digital asset exchange ShapeShift felt the frost of the crypto winter as the establishment was forced into firing 37 employees, reports a blog post made by the exchange’s CEO Eric Voorhees. The blog post titled “Overcoming ShapeShift’s Crypto Winter and the Path Ahead” explained that ShapeShift had to reduce the size of its team by a third mostly because of the current market bear cycle.

Voorhees notes that ShapeShift managed to record a growth of 3000% in 2017, carried on the highs of then present crypto explosion. The exchange’s business model does comprise of embracing the benefits of crypto exposure; at the same time, ShapeShift is forced to accept the risks of the market. As the market fortunes turned around and the prices started going down, the effects which came with the recession were “similarly dramatic and severe”, he explains.

He further mentions how the crypto market boom made the company “lose focus”. ShapeShift development and growth was diluted by the teams other projects, including CoinCap (live crypto market data aggregator), non-custodial portfolio management systems using Ethereum smart-contracts, and acquisition of KeepKey hardware wallet company. This naturally strained the company’s financial and human resources and led to the core project suffering.

Citing legal issues, people and structural issues, problems with customers and financial issues as the main problems which arose from the 2018 bear market, Voorhees explains that the “confluence of these issues” combined with the project’s own “lack of product focus” resulted in the January 8th layoffs. Reiterating his belief in the crypto assets’ ability to support direct economic interaction, the CEO of ShapeShift points out that his company will take the lessons learned here and use them to become a more efficient, 21 century-ready platform. Check out the blog post detailing the recent ShapeShift restructuring here.

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Rene Peters
Rene Peters

Rene Peters is editor-in-chief of CaptainAltcoin and is responsible for editorial planning and business development. After his training as an accountant, he studied diplomacy and economics and held various positions in one of the management consultancies and in couple of digital marketing agencies. He is particularly interested in the long-term implications of blockchain technology for politics, society and the economy.

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