Foundry, a mining pool owned by Digital Currency Group (DCG), has laid off 16% of its US-based employees and a “small team in India”.
“We continue to refine our strategy to ensure long-term success and growth in a dynamic market,” a spokesperson said in an email. “We have made a strategic decision to focus on our core business: operating the number one Bitcoin mining pool.” We have grown our site operations business around the world, supporting the development of DCG's newest subsidiaries, including the successful spin-out of Yuma and Foundry's self-mining operations. ”
A company spokesperson said the restructuring plan had already been disclosed in DCG's latest letter to shareholders.
“As part of this restructuring, we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce at Foundry, resulting in layoffs across multiple teams. All of our employees, including those affected by these changes, We are grateful for their contributions,” the spokesperson continued.
Miners are under pressure to cut costs across the board, as the halving cuts the number of new Bitcoins created per block in half, making mining less profitable.
The Bitcoin Hash Price Index, a measure of the return a miner can expect from a given amount of hashrate, has fallen significantly to about $60 per hash per day, from an average of about $100 last December. It has increased in the last 3 months.
In a recent report, investment bank JP Morgan said that given the current Bitcoin price and the poor performance of miner stocks, the notional value of all Bitcoin remaining mined is $74 billion. .
Bitcoin has risen more than 130% in the last year, according to data from CoinDesk.
Update (December 4, 12:27 UTC): The company has changed its spokesperson to a Foundry representative. Previous versions said it was from DCG.
