Foundry Lays Off 16% of U.S. Employees as It Focuses on Core Business

Digital Currency Group (DCG) owned mining pool Foundry has laid off 16% of its U.S.-based employees and a "small team in India."

“We are continuously refining our strategy to ensure long-term success and growth in a dynamic market," a spokesperson said in an email. "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 Yuma and the spinout of Foundry’s successful self-mining business."

A spokesperson for the company said DCG's most recent shareholder letter already disclosed plans for this realignment.

"As part of this realignment, we made the difficult decision to reduce Foundry’s workforce, resulting in layoffs across multiple teams. We’re grateful for the contributions of all our employees, including those impacted by these changes,” the spokesperson continued.

In total, Foundry reduced its headcount by 27%, from 274 to 200, Foundry CEO Mike Coyler told Blockspace.

Foundry’s mining pool — which allows various miners to band their computational resources together in order to produce more blocks — accounts for almost 32% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate, making it the largest pool on the network.

The bitcoin mining firm also has other business lines, which include mining site operations, hardware production, ASIC repairs, mining shipments, technical education and self-mining.

About 20 staff members were also moved from Foundry to another DCG subsidiary, Yuma, which focuses on AI development, according to Blockspace.

Across the board, miners are under pressure to cut costs as the halving cuts the number of new bitcoins created per block in half, making mining less profitable.

The bitcoin hashprice index, a measure of the earnings a miner can anticipate from a given amount of hashrate, is down significantly over the last year to roughly $60 per hash/day, down from an average of around $100 in December – however the price has ticked up in the last three months.

In a recent report, investment bank JPMorgan said that the notional value of all remaining bitcoin left to be mined is $74 billion given current bitcoin prices and the miners' stocks have been underperforming.

Bitcoin is up over 130% in the last year, according to CoinDesk data.

UPDATE (Dec. 4, 12:27 UTC): Company changes spokesperson to Foundry representative. An earlier version said they were from DCG.

UPDATE (Dec. 4, 17:37 UTC): Additional information about Foundry's business operations, the total number of employees impacted by the layoffs, and the Blockspace report about employees moving to Yuma.