Now the crypto winter has also arrived in Zug. A well-known trading platform has to dismiss every third employee there.
Shapeshift founder Erik Voorhees is one of the luminaries of Zug’s “Crypto Valley”. Since 2014, he has been demonstrating a breathtaking growth story with the Shapeshift trading platform, which is domiciled on the Hub, and has received a lot of applause.
However, in an open letter on the portal “Medium”, the young entrepreneur has struck a different tone. The “crypto winter”, that is, the effects of the massive collapse of numerous digital currencies in 2018, has obviously also affected Shapeshift. The company dismisses 37 employees, reducing staff by one third.
Setback also self-inflicted
This will also haunt Zug’s global wave of layoffs in the emerging industry; So far, it seemed as though the Swiss hub could defy the unfair consequences of the crypto-economy. Last December, 3,262 people were employed in 750 companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as finews.ch reported.
According to Voorhees, the uncomfortable situation of his company is also self-inflicted. The company had bogged down with projects, there had been organizational and legal problems. The startup is also under pressure today because the management reinvested income into digital assets.
Bad press from the «Journal»
Lately, Shapeshift also had to face bad press. The influential US Wall Street Journal claimed in a study that fraudulent crypto transactions were also transacted via the platform of the Zug-based company – a charge that Shapeshift has widely rejected.
Also published on Medium.