The year of 2018 will definitely be remembered by many not only for the market fall, but also for the decision of some crypto entrepreneurs, who in every intended to nurture the bright future of the crypto industry, but failed to stand against another wave of crisis.
One of these days, one of the Ethereum (ETH) Сo-Founders, Joseph Lubin, tweeted that the industry has reached its "cryptobottom." And everything would be fine, but Lubin highlighted that society had reached the bottom because of "an epic amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt from our friends in the 4th and crypto-5th estates."
No matter how ironic it may sound but Lubin played a key role in this crisis. Why? Let's find out.
In early December, according to a source familiar with the matter, the head of the blockchain startup ConsenSys, Joseph Lubin, sent a letter to the staff informing about massive changes in the organization’s work.
How massive? Pretty massive. Almost 60% of the staff.
The situation looks even more ironic if we recall Lubin’s interview with Bloomberg in August 2018. Back then, the head of ConsenSys stated the crypto community had already seen "six big bubbles, each more epic than the previous one."
In the same interview, Lubin made it very clear that the situation would eventually improve, since "each of these bubbles has the advantage of bringing attention into our ecosystem."
The whole situation with layoffs looks even more paradoxical, given the fact that in October, ConsenSys bought asteroid mining company.
If we add to all of this, that in the same month, ConsenSys invested approximately $6.5 million in the startup of the former top manager of R3 Tim Grant, DrumG, it isn't clear what is the main strategy of ConsenSys.
Being in the heart of a storm and invest a pretty big amount of money in something? This is what it feels like to be an entrepreneur in crypto industry.
And Lubin isn’t the last person in crypto space who decided to close up the shop during the storm. For instance, the founder and CEO of the social blockchain platform Steemit, Ned Scott, made the announcement, according to which the company had to lay off approximately 70% of its employees.
It’s worth noting that Vitalik Buterin has already noted on twitter that the decision to hire 500 people, dismissing them later was a really bad decision.
As a backdrop to all this, the founder and CEO of the TRON cryptocurrency platform, Justin San, is willing to save the DApps developers Ethereum and EOS from the collapse of their platforms.
Given the conditions of migration, many immediately began to poke fun at the founder of the TRON.
The whole situation with layoffs once again proves that though the crypto industry is no longer young, it consists, as a rule, of optimist-investors.
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