Bitcoin Forum

Ethereum browser startup Status.IM is cutting a quarter of its staff due to the ongoing downturn in cryptocurrency prices.

Announcing the move internally on Monday, co-founder Jarrad Hope said that the startup is much larger than can be sustained due to the fact that the company did not anticipate ethereum’s price dropping more than 80 percent.

COO Nabil Naghdy first publicly confirmed the layoffs when reached by CoinDesk on Friday.

The company originally raised 182,000 ETH during a token sale last year, which was worth $64 million at the time (at present prices, the same amount of ether is worth roughly $15.5 million). Status.IM also did not have “solid banking partners” until the second quarter of this year, exacerbating the issue, he said.

As such, Status.IM cut 25 percent of its staff – about 25 individuals – on Monday. Those laid off are considered “non-essential” to the project’s long-term goals, according to Hope.

The company is looking to stretch its fiat currency holdings to cover its expenses for roughly another six months. Status is also asking current employees to accept pay cuts, “which will alleviate as the market picks up,” Hope said. Employees will then receive a greater amount of SNT tokens “to help offset the cut.”

Still, this may not be enough, as Hope went on to explain:

“The reality is that we will have to make another assessment end of Q2 which if the market hasn’t picked up we will be forced to make the organization even leaner, and the remaining fiat and our large ETH holdings will be used to create a runway measured in years.”

The startup’s priorities over the next several months are to deliver on promises made in its white paper and “get the app into a usable state,” he wrote.

Naghdy told CoinDesk that, despite the cuts, “we continue to have a large and stable engineering team” working on both the white paper promises and an ethereum 2.0 implementation dubbed Nimbus.

Aside from the fiat holdings, Status has roughly 190,000 ETH to tap as a resource, Naghdy said. The company’s six-month runway is solely based on the fiat holdings, and the company does not have any current plans to pursue further fundraising.https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-chat-startup-status-lays-off-25-of-staff

yes, people are not only losing money through crypto but also their job. it is really terrible to see how the price drop shows more negative sides. as long as the market does not stabilize, we often have to read bad news.

The dip has seriously affected cryptocurrency sector. Projects cant pay staff anymore or have enough money to sustain project development. A lot of companies with funds in eth may run out of business in the next six months

It is a pity that this happens and companies are forced to fire people in order to save their projects!

This is a sad thing. Ethereum is the coin that makes investors lose the most. The price of Ethereum has already seen panic selling this year. The development team is also selling Ethereum. Perhaps the future of Ethereum is getting smaller and smaller. I have begun to lose confidence.

As the cryptocurrency market continues to slump, such as exchanges and mainstream cryptocurrency teams, this situation may continue to happen!

a lot of these so called "companies" have been facing a hard time existing because they had flawed business plans and were only hyped up because of the pumping season that lasted nearly a year last year and they were naive enough to think it can last forever so they can make money from it!
now that they are facing the reality of the dumps they have to give up their dreams and leave.

indeed it does reveal some of the project vital flaw . it cannot sustain itself during prolong bear market

now their ex employees are facing critical situation since they need to find new job . i only hope they give a good termination package so ex employees  can survive in coming months

Quite shocking that a company that raised 64 million is now in dire trouble. It shows that they should have cashed out at the right time or moved them into stable coins. Even these businesses do not know how to handle funds, shows how tough this market is

It is not just the price of ethereum going down but also the funding is going down with it as well. These people are getting paid in ethereum so they could fund the project but when the price of ethereum goes from 1500 to 90 or whatever it is right now that means they have lost most of their funding not by spending it but just keeping it there. That is not something many business could afford and its understandable that they can't grow as fast as they hoped which would result with them firing their workers.

I think it is marvelous that they keep 75% of the staff considering they could even close the shop and say they won't continue with the market it is. Even keeping a core amount of staff and just continue doing what they have been doing is still a great deal of success.