Foundry, the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool, has laid off 27% of its staff amid a planned restructuring, a person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph on Dec. 3.
The layoffs include 16% of Foundry’s United States-based workforce and a portion of its team in India as well, the person said.
Foundry’s parent company, DCG, tipped plans to spin out Foundry’s self-mining business into a separate entity, still controlled by DCG, according to a November shareholder letter shared with Cointelegraph.
“We recently made the strategic decision to focus Foundry on our core business – operating the #1 Bitcoin mining pool in the world and growing our site operations business – while we supported the development of DCG’s newest subsidiaries, including…the spinout of Foundry’s successful self-mining business,” Foundry told Cointelegraph in a statement.
“As part of this realignment, we made the difficult decision to reduce Foundry’s workforce, resulting in layoffs across multiple teams,” the team said.
Bitcoin mining pools’ market share. Source: Hashrate Index
Market share
Foundry operates Foundry USA, the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world, controlling approximately one-third of the market share among pool operators, according to data from Hashrate Index.
It also runs a self-mining business, which DCG said is on track to earn nearly $80 million in sales in 2024, according to its November investor report.
“We believe this enterprise will be stronger as a standalone business, and so we are spinning it out as a wholly-owned DCG subsidiary,” DCG said in November, adding that “[w]e are bringing external hires with the intent to raise capital.”
Industry adjustments
Across the industry, Bitcoin miners are cutting costs and embracing artificial intelligence as they grapple with the consequences of the network’s April halving.
The Bitcoin network’s halvings occur every four years and cut the number of BTC mined per block in half.
The increasing cost and difficulty of mining BTC has resulted in highly varied outcomes among Bitcoin miners, according to CoinShares’ Q3 mining report.
“Despite this, miners have continued to roll out new infrastructure and have committed to further expansion, anticipating future price increases,” CoinShares said.
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