Blockchain startup Steemit has laid off close to 70 percent of its staff, citing the prolonged bear market for cryptocurrency.
In a video address posted to YouTube Thursday, Steemit CEO and founder Ned Scott said:
“While we were building out our team over the last many months we have been relying on projections of basically a higher bottom for the market and since that's no longer there, we've been forced to lay off more than 70 percent of our organization and begin a restructuring.”The address did not specify how many employees Steemit had before the layoff and requests for further details were not returned by press time.
Nevertheless, elaborating on the impact of low market prices for major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Scott wrote in a blog post that “fiat returns” could no longer adequately cover the “growing costs of running full Steem nodes.”