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Ternio Research Finds Blockchain-Affiliated Companies Are Employing Over 86,000 People

Ternio, a leading white-label technology company, has revealed the findings of a new study dubbed “The State of Crypto Entrepreneurship 2019.” This firm presents enterprise customers with cryptocurrency and blockchain real-world applications.

The primary goal of this research was to comprehend better the statistics of the number of jobs being generated in the crypto space, as well as the success rate of funded startups in this sector.

Ternio conducted this study from Oct 14-Nov 29, 2019, and a total of 5331 crypto/blockchain organizations were scrutinized. It was, therefore, estimated that they employ 86,443 people across the globe.

94% of Crypto Startups are Lead by Men

The study noted that 2,577 startups had received funding worth $4.7 billion from investors through an ICO, angel, or venture capital (VC). Nevertheless, 472 of them had either closed down or were no longer active, and this represented 18%.

The findings also pointed out that 94.3% of crypto startups were led by men, whereas 5.7% of them by women. On the other hand, New York City was deemed as the most popular destination for crypto startups.

The report also ascertained that 63% of crypto/blockchain CEOs are white. Moreover, 38% of crypto organizations were developed by first-time founders.

Ternio has notable expertise in the blockchain spectrum because it is seen as a pioneer in high-speed blockchain technology with the capability of surpassing 1 million transactions per second, all on-chain.

Additionally, it is the developer of BlockCard, a crypto debit card that enables cardholders to utilize their cryptocurrency.

Ternio has also been at the forefront when it comes to solving issues linked to payment utility of cryptocurrency and blockchain scalability.

As reported by Blockchain.News on Nov 29, according to a study dubbed the “Q3 2019 Cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Report,” by CipherTrace, a blockchain forensics company, the cryptocurrency sector has lost a whopping $4.4 billion in scams and thefts so far this year, up by more than 150% from $1.7 billion in 2018.

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OpenSea Desperate to Hire New Engineers to Relieve its Overwhelmed Staff

Decentralised Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace, OpenSea is on the lookout for new engineers as it looks to relieve its current staffers from the overwhelming tasks of managing the marketplace’s trading volume. As revealed by Nate Chastain, the Head of Product at OpenSea, only about 37 people are handling over 98% of all trading volumes on the platform.

The growth of NFTs has been unprecedented in 2021. Marketplaces like OpenSea have built an ecosystem to encourage retail trading of digital collectables and, as such, helping to drive more mainstream adoption of the new technology.

With the marketplace made possible by OpenSea, many digital artists and creators can find a place to earn rewards for their skills. The fundamental reason behind OpenSea’s popularity is that it pioneered lowering the barrier for entry into the NFT metaverse.

As reported earlier by Blockhain.news, the daily transactions being processed on the OpenSea platform is now 650x the transactions processed for the whole of 2020. In monetary terms, this exponential growth showed that the platform processed $95 million worth of NFT transactions in two days compared to the cumulative volume of $21 million recorded in the entirety of 2020.

While competitor platforms such as Rarible and SuperRare, OpenSea’s foundational role has been entrenched, and future growth push cannot be ruled out. To further emphasise the urgency of the proposed staff hunt, Chastain is offering a referral bonus of 1 ETH (worth $3170) to anyone who points the team in the right direction where they can hire the best candidates.

OpenSea recently raised $100 million in a Series B funding round, a boost that pushed the company up to the ranks of crypto unicorns with a $1.5 billion valuation. With this funding, the firm has enough liquidity to bolster its workforce, and it is committed to doing so in the coming months.

Compass Mining CEO And CFO Abruptly Resign, Company Faces Business Struggles

Compass Mining, a Bitcoin mining hosting and brokerage services firm based in Delaware, US, announced on Tuesday that its CEO, Mr. Whit Gibbs, and CFO, Mr. Jodie Fisher, have resigned effective immediately.

In a statement, the company admitted that while the firm was established to make mining easy and accessible, multiple setbacks and disappointments have detracted it from accomplishing that objective.

Compass has appointed chief technology officer Paul Gosker and chief mining officer Thomas Heller to serve as interim co-presidents and CEOs.

Meanwhile, the company’s board is searching for talents to fill such positions permanently.

The firm pointed out some measures that it is currently undertaking to turn around its fortunes: “Through this restructuring, the company is wholly focused on regaining the goodwill of our stakeholders and the community, as well as delivering on our mission of providing best-in-class service for miners of all sizes.”

Compass Mining offers a marketplace service for individual people to mine Bitcoin in facilities across Canada and the U.S.

Recently, reports showed that Compass Mining was unable to pay its electricity costs at its facility in Maine. Early this year, the company lost access to about $30 million of equipment after the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Russian crypto mining company BitRiver.

Challenges facing Compass Mining are not new as most of them are triggered by macroeconomic risks. All mining firms have been badly hit since cryptocurrencies recently entered the bear market.

Several miners have been liquidating their assets over the past few months, with exchange inflows steadily rising. This has added to the downward pressure on Bitcoin and the entire crypto markets, resulting in the flagship cryptocurrency’s price plunging 74% from its all-time high to just below $18,000 on June 19.

Many publicly listed mining companies sold 100% of their entire production in May. The conditions have worsened this month, implying they are likely to sell more assets.

Difficulty and hash rate (network computing power) have increased along with energy prices, while cryptocurrency prices have dropped over the same period.

Top Executives Quit as Babel Finance Sees Financial Woes

Troubled crypto lending firm Babel Finance is continuing to face further woes as multiple top employees are leaving the company.

According to the latest report, one of the prominent employees, Yulong Liu, head of global partnerships at Babel Finance, is set to leave the company by the end of this month or early next month.

As head of partnerships, Liu has been in charge of representing Babel at public events and focuses on acquiring new partners for the company, including depositors and borrowers. The executive worked for the firm for almost three years.

Liu recently updated his LinkedIn account to state that he left working for Babel this month and shortly after deleted his profile.

Besides Liu, other employees are also reported leaving the firm. Many other workers from the partnerships team have also quit. For instance, Sean Yang, the director of global partnerships; Xavier Xiang, another director of global partnerships; and Yuchen Jiang, who worked in an unspecified partnership function, are identified to have left Babel amid the company’s troubles.

Furthermore, employees working on the PR and communications team, including Yiwei Wang, the firm’s global PR lead, and Jacynth Wang, the director of communications, among others, are also identified to have resigned.

Crypto Lending firms on Spotlight

On 17th June, Babel Finance became part of the breaking news across the world after the firm halted withdrawals and redemptions of crypto assets due to liquidity pressures.

The current extreme difficult market conditions have left Babel and other related financial institutions experiencing conductive risk events.

Three days later, Babel updated information with regards to its financial situation. The firm stated it reached an agreement with counterparties on the repayment of some debts to ease short-term liquidity.

Crypto lending firms normally collect crypto deposits from retail customers and reinvest them with the expectation of generating double-digit returns and attracting tens of billions of dollars in assets.

However, many of these firms have been unable to redeem their clients’ assets during the recent market downturn.

Last week, rival crypto staking and yield generation platform Finblox, based in Hong Kong, restricted customers to make a withdrawal of $1,500 once per month and suspended rewards. The firm made the move after it was exposed to the uncertainty facing crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital as well as the current market volatility.

Two weeks ago, prominent crypto lender Celsius Network suspended all withdrawals, swap, and transfers between accounts, as it cited “extreme” market conditions.

Crypto lending platform BlockFi and crypto hedge fund firm Three Arrows Capital are also recently identified as facing a liquidity crisis.