Seychelles-based crypto exchange company Huobi plans to lay off about 20% of its staff, according to a Friday report from Reuters.



See related article: Digital Currency Group shuts down wealth management unit: report



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The layoffs will not be immediate but are necessary due to the current state of the crypto bear market, Huobi told Reuters. 



The company’s statement reportedly confirmed an earlier message from advisory board member and Tron founder Justin Sun, who said that Huobi’s structural adjustment is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2023. 



The cuts would add to a wave of layoffs within the crypto industry following the fallout from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and the trial of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried. 



Cryptocurrency bank Silvergate Capital recently laid off 40% of its staff, and Digital Currency Group’s crypto brokerage subsidiary Genesis Global Trading has announced a 30% staff reduction. 



Chinese entrepreneur Leon Li Lin founded Huobi in Beijing in 2013, riding on China’s crypto boom to become one of the largest exchanges in the world. The company moved operations out of China after Beijing in 2021 declared all crypto transactions illegal.



Lin sold his ownership of Huobi to a Hong Kong-based asset management company About Capital Management in October last year. 



Huobi was the fourth most visited crypto exchange over the past week, with over US$ 2.5 trillion in total assets, according to the analytics website CoinMarketCap . 




See related article: Silvergate cuts 40% of staff after covering US$8.1B withdrawals in FTX collapse