Month: January 2023

Crypto exchange Crypto.com is cutting its global workforce by 20%, it said on Friday, as it navigates ongoing economic headwinds and “unforeseeable” industry events.

This is the second major layoff at the Singapore-headquartered Crypto.com, which cut 250 jobs in mid-last year — though a report suggested that more than 2,000 people were either let go or left at their own will. The company did not say what roles were being eliminated in the new round of layoff but blamed the collapse of FTX, whose misappropriation of customers’ funds and bankruptcy “significantly damaged trust in the industry.”

“We grew ambitiously at the start of 2022, building on our incredible momentum and aligning with the trajectory of the broader industry. That trajectory changed rapidly with a confluence of negative economic developments,” Kris Marszalek (pictured above), co-founder and chief executive of Crypto.com, said in a blog post.

As with firms in other industries, crypto companies are aggressively undertaking major decisions to survive the downturn in the broader market, which has reversed much of the gains from the 13-year bull run. Coinbase cut about 20% of its workforce earlier this week in its second round of major layoffs at the firm. Kraken said in November that it plans to lay off 1,100 people, or 30% of its workforce.

Even then Crypto.com had a especially rough last year. The firm received some criticism for its cringey/overly enthusiastic Matt Damon ad; accidentally sent an Australian customer more than $10 million in a snafu, and grappled with industry concerns over its financial health performance.

The firm received a vote of confidence from auditing firm Mazars, which said Crypto.com users’ crypto assets were fully backed one-to-one. But days later, Mazars, which also audited Binance, said it had paused its work with crypto clients.

“The reductions we made last July positioned us to weather the macro economic downturn, but it did not account for the recent collapse of FTX, which significantly damaged trust in the industry. It’s for this reason, as we continue to focus on prudent financial management, we made the difficult but necessary decision to make additional reductions in order to position the company for long-term success,” Marszalek added.

Crypto.com cuts 20% jobs amid ‘unforeseeable’ industry events by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

People using third-party Twitter clients are facing a number of issues including unable to log in and access Twitter feeds. Tweetbot, Echofon, and Twitterrific, three popular third-party Twitter apps, confirmed the issues and noted that they are not sure what has triggered the glitch.

Makers of these apps also complained about these issues on Mastadon. Twitterrific developer Sean Heber said ” Did Twitter just kill 3rd party clients?” while Tweetbot’s Paul Hadad said “I’m hoping whatever is going on at Twitter is just some automated spam protection bot that is incorrectly suspending proper apps”.

In an email response to TechCrunch Haddad said that the issue started around 7.30 PM PT today. He also mentioned that all API requests from the apps are failing.

It’s likely that Twitter made some changes to its API for third-party clients that resulted in these apps breaking down. It’s not clear if this is a step to thwart access to the platform.

Apart from the above-mentioned apps, users complained about being unable to access Twitter from clients like Fenix, Twitpane, Feather, and Talon. So the only way to access Twitter is through the official client or the website.

A post on Twitter’s developer forum said that on the developer portal, these apps show up as “Suspended”.

Since Elon Musk’s takeover, Twitter has killed many developer programs including Twitter Toolbox for app discovery. Third-party developers have been cautious about their development plans around Twitter as the company hasn’t communicated its plans for the ecosystem. Last month, the company’s former head of developer platforms, Amir Shevat, wrote for TechCrunch that the new management broke the trust of developers.

Earlier this week, Twitter decided to make the algorithmic timeline — named “For You” — the default feed on iOS.

The story is developing…

Third-party Twitter apps are facing issues, users say by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch