[ad_1]
This is bad news for the cryptocurrency industry without it.
The latest episode suggests that the very difficult times the young blockchain-powered financial services industry is going through are far from over.
Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has announced that it will cut its workforce by 20%, in a general move to cut costs in dealing with falling cryptocurrency prices.
“In the current bear market, we will continue to have a very lean team,” a Huobi spokesperson told Reuters.
The company employs about 1,600 people as of the end of October. However, with no recent figures available, it is difficult to say exactly how many jobs will be cut.
shutter stock
Affected Huobi Tokens
Based in Seychelles, Huobi is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. According to data firm CoinGecko, the platform has recorded around $318 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours.
The job cut announcement impacted HT, the native token or cryptocurrency issued by the Huobi ecosystem. HT is down 7% over the last 7 days.
The company was founded in China in 2013 but was forced into exile after Beijing began cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry. As a result, Huobi currently conducts consulting and research activities only in mainland China, and trading activities outside the country.We have offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and the US
The company is owned by About Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based asset management firm.
Huobi, like all cryptocurrency exchanges, has been subject to doubt and disbelief about its robustness after FTX’s unexpected bankruptcy. Considered one of the most powerful companies in the cryptocurrency industry after being valued at $32 billion in February, FTX went bankrupt on November 11 after failing to keep up with the high volume of customer withdrawal requests. Did.
A scent of suspicion has surrounded the rest of the exchange ever since. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was the subject of many rumors in December, with panicked customers withdrawing $6 billion between Dec. 12 and Dec. 14, a spokesperson said. told TheStreet at the time.
Wash trade concerns
These allegations were reinforced by the decision of audit firm Mothers to cut ties with all cryptocurrency companies.
In December, Mazars said it had “suspended its activities related to providing reserve reports to entities in the cryptocurrency sector due to concerns about the way these reports are generally understood.”
The purpose of a reserves audit is to show that a cryptocurrency company has sufficient reserves to handle collections from customers and investors. The audit also aims to increase public confidence and demonstrate transparency where most cryptocurrency companies are unregulated.
In an interview with TheStreet, billionaire Mark Cuban further warned that the illegal practice of laundering trades, which is expected to have a major impact on centralized exchanges, could collapse. .
In an email interview with TheStreet, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks believes the next possible implosion will be the discovery and removal of wash trades on the central exchange. “There are probably tens of millions of dollars in trading and liquidity in a little-used token.
Wash trading, an illegal practice, consists of making a profit by creating an artificial interest in a financial instrument (in this case, a crypto token or coin). This form of “pump and dump” method is widespread in the cryptocurrency industry.
While there have been many wash trades in traditional finance, the cryptocurrency space is particularly useful in practice, with around 13,000 cryptocurrencies listed, according to data firm CoinGecko. You need to highlight one or another token from that pack to be able to participate in the trade.
For example, according to a Forbes survey of 157 centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in 2022, more than half of Bitcoin-related exchanges are counterfeit.
[ad_2]
Source link
