Crypto Companies Make Huge Job Cuts and Embrace AI

A wave of recent layoffs has eliminated hundreds of jobs within the cryptocurrency industry.

And as CoinDesk reported Saturday (March 21), the companies making these cuts are pointing to factors ranging from a downturn in the digital assets market to their own integration of artificial intelligence.

Last week saw Crypto.com announce it was cutting 180 jobs, or 12% of its staff, while the Algorand Foundation said it would let go of 25% of its workforce — under 200 employees — due to what it called “the uncertain global macro environment” and a wider crypto downturn.

And in February, Gemini said it would cut around a quarter of its staff, though that number had expanded to 30% by the middle of March, the report added.

“AI is now too powerful not to use at Gemini,” that company said in its letter to shareholders. “Not using AI at Gemini will soon be the equivalent of showing up to work with a typewriter instead of a laptop.”

Coindesk says industry observers say the trend is being driven by consolidation, as crypto sectors like restaking have shrunk, while mergers and acquisitions are leading to “acquihires,” or employees acquired by purchasing another company, are displacing legacy workers.

“I see no real indication that these layoffs have anything to do with AI workforce replacement at scale,” Dan Escow, founder of crypto recruitment agency Up Top, told Coindesk.

“Entire categories like restaking, DePIN and L2s that were once robust with talent are basically nonexistent. Companies are forced into cost-cutting mode to buy time to figure out how to execute on whatever comes next.”

In other crypto news, PYMNTS wrote last week about new research showing that 42% of middle market companies have at least discussed, tested or used stablecoins, while 13% report actual stablecoin use.

“Increasingly, their preferred path to that improvement is not through crypto-native wallets or FinTech intermediaries, but through banks,” PYMNTS added. “Trust in the channel, it turns out, matters for finance chiefs, and banks offer familiar controls, integrated reporting and compliance guardrails that plug into existing treasury workflows.”

While crypto-native wallets are efficient, the report continued, they introduce unfamiliar risks, such as private key management, fragmented reporting, uncertainty around custody standards and evolving regulatory interpretations.

“Banks, by contrast, provide a trust layer that CFOs already understand,” the report added. “They offer established custody frameworks, standardized reporting and compliance processes that align with existing audit requirements. When stablecoins are accessed through a bank, they are effectively wrapped in the institutional safeguards that finance teams depend on.”