More Than 7,000 Jobs Gone: Layoffs in the Crypto Industry Are Picking up

Luno just told roughly a fifth of its staff to pack up, and it's barely news anymore — that's how routine crypto layoffs have become in 2026. The exchange's CEO, James Lanigan, blamed automation and operational streamlining, while the company pivots toward institutional clients and B2B infrastructure. This isn't Luno's first rodeo either: back in January 2023 it slashed 35% of headcount, hitting nearly 330 people. Now it's happening again, just with fewer employees left to cut.

The numbers around Luno are part of something bigger. CryptoJobsList has tracked more than 7,254 disclosed layoffs across 47 companies this year, with July alone accounting for 894 cuts at a dozen firms. Block's fintech arm led the pack with 4,000 jobs gone in February — 40% of its workforce, officially chalked up to an "AI pivot." That single event makes up over half the year's total, which says something about how skewed these industry-wide tallies can get.

Unlike the bloodbath of 2022, there's no smoking gun this time. No Terra implosion, no FTX-style collapse, no depegged stablecoin. Bitcoin simply slid from its October 2025 peak near $126,200 down to the low $60,000s by late July, dragged by fading rate-cut hopes and roughly $4 billion pouring out of US spot Bitcoin ETFs in June alone. Trading volumes shrank, fee revenue followed, and companies that fattened up during the bull run are now trimming the excess. Increasingly, firms from BitGo to Kraken to Crypto.com are also pointing to AI-driven automation as a reason headcount is shrinking, not just market softness.

And then there's BitMEX, which isn't trimming — it's shutting down entirely. The exchange that invented the 100x-leverage perpetual swap back in 2014, a product now copied across the industry, will stop trading on September 23, 2026. New signups are already frozen, and starting August 26 users can only close positions, not open new ones. BitMEX survived eleven years without losing customer funds to a hack, weathered a Bank Secrecy Act case against its founders, and even saw Trump pardon them in 2025. But losing ground to faster centralized rivals and decentralized derivatives platforms proved to be the thing it couldn't outrun.

What's happening here isn't a single crash — it's erosion. Slower, quieter, and in some ways more telling than 2022's fireworks, because it suggests the industry's cost structure was never built for a prolonged downturn, AI or no AI.