Bitcoin miner Foundry lays off workers amid restructuring

The world's largest bitcoin (BTC) mining pool, Foundry, has laid off 27 percent of its workforce in a planned restructuring, a person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph on December 3.

The layoffs include about 16 percent of the foundry's U.S.-based workforce and a portion of its team in India, the person said.

Foundry's parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) indicated plans to spin off Foundry's own mining operations to a separate entity, still controlled by DCG, in a November shareholder letter shared with Cointelegraph.

“We recently made a strategic decision to focus Foundry on our core business – operating the world's #1 Bitcoin mining pool and to grow our site operations – while supporting the development of DCG's new branches. […] The success of Foundry's successful auto-mining business,” Foundry told Cointelegraph in a statement.

“As part of this restructuring, we have taken the difficult decision to reduce our foundry workforce, which has resulted in redundancies across a number of teams,” the group said.

Related: Bitcoin Miners Cut Costs, AI Post-Half Hug: CoinShares

market share

Foundry, which operates Foundry USA, is the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world and controls approximately one-third of the market share among pool operators, according to Hashrate Index data.

According to the November investor report, DCG is on track to achieve sales revenue of approximately $80 million by 2024. It will also operate its own mining operations.

“We believe this enterprise will be stronger as an independent business and we are running it as a wholly-owned subsidiary of DCG,” DCG said in November, adding that “we are bringing in external employees to raise capital.”

Industrial adjustments

Across the industry, bitcoin miners are cutting costs and embracing artificial intelligence as they grapple with the aftermath of the network's April halving.

The Bitcoin network halving occurs every four years, halving the number of BTC produced per block.

The increasing cost and difficulty of mining BTC has led to very different results among Bitcoin miners, according to the CoinShares Q3 mining report.

“Despite this, miners continue to expand new infrastructure and are committed to further expansion in anticipation of future price increases,” CoinShares said.

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