Bahrain-based Middle East cryptocurrency exchange Lane has fired hundreds of employees due to worsening profitability caused by the cryptocurrency winter.



Bloomberg reported on the 1st (local time) that Lane fired hundreds of employees. Lane did not disclose the exact number of employees fired.



Lane was established in 2017 as one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the Middle East. Earlier this year, it decided to raise $110 million (about 140 billion won) through a Series B investment round led by Paradigm and Klayner Perkins. Lane originally tried to double the size of its employees based on its investment in Series B investment round, but it faced a situation of reducing the size of its employees.



Lane’s dismissal of hundreds of employees seems to be due to the liquidity crisis triggered by the cryptocurrency winter. Lane said, “We’ve been laying off considering operational needs and market conditions. Given the difficult market conditions, we’ve had to adjust our future plans to get through this downturn.”



As Lane fired hundreds of employees, Domino’s, which fired the virtual asset market due to the cryptocurrency winter, has expanded to the Middle East. Even before Lane, Coinbase, Crypto Dotcom, and Block Pie carried out large-scale layoffs, while Reflection, Huobi, and Bybit also fired a significant portion of their employees. Open, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, also decided to lay off 20 percent of its employees.



The industry analyzed that the number of layoffs in the cryptocurrency industry has already exceeded 5,000 since April this year, and that the size of the cryptocurrency boom has continued to expand too quickly until the end of last year.