TL;DR
- Kraken announces a significant restructuring plan, laying off 15% of its workforce, affecting approximately 400 employees, to streamline operations and become more agile in the competitive crypto market.
- Arjun Sethi is appointed as co-CEO alongside Dave Ripley, bringing fresh leadership and momentum to the company, with a focus on reducing management layers and enhancing efficiency.
- The layoffs are part of a broader trend in the cryptocurrency industry, with other companies like Consensys and dYdX also reducing their workforce amid market challenges.
Kraken has announced a significant restructuring plan that includes laying off 15% of its workforce. This decision will affect approximately 400 employees out of the company’s 2,600-strong workforce. The layoffs come as part of Kraken’s efforts to streamline operations and become more agile in the competitive crypto market.
The company aims to reduce management layers and focus on building rather than managing, according to a blog post by the new co-CEOs.
New Leadership Structure
In addition to the layoffs, Kraken has appointed Arjun Sethi as co-CEO, who will serve alongside Dave Ripley. Sethi, a longtime Silicon Valley executive and co-founder of Tribe Capital, has been on Kraken’s board since 2021.
His appointment is expected to bring fresh leadership and momentum to the company. Jesse Powell, Kraken’s co-founder and Board Chair, expressed confidence in Sethi’s ability to drive the company’s next phase of growth.
“Arjun has served on the Kraken board since 2021 and has helped us navigate a lot of our toughest challenges. That’s why I fully trust him to inject new leadership and momentum into what we’re doing,” Powell stated.
Focus on Efficiency and Growth
The restructuring aims to make Kraken leaner and faster, positioning it better in the competitive crypto exchange market. The company has emphasized the need for organizational discipline and the elimination of unnecessary management layers.
“We fell into the trap of building organizational layers. We need to be more agile and faster,” Sethi and Ripley noted in their blog post.
The layoffs include senior roles, such as Chief Operating Officer Gilles BianRosa and Chief Technology Officer Vishnu Patankar, highlighting the depth of the restructuring effort.
Industry-Wide Trend
Kraken’s layoffs are part of a broader trend in the cryptocurrency industry, which has seen numerous companies reducing their workforce amid market challenges.
Consensys, the developer of MetaMask, recently announced a 20% reduction in its workforce, while the decentralized exchange platform dYdX cut its core team by 35%. Despite these challenges, the crypto market has shown resilience, with Bitcoin trading around $72,256, up 7% over the past week.
