The Argentine startup Lemon Cash announced that 38% of its personnel has been laid off. The confirmed series of layoffs will affect around 100 people. Up to today, the company employed 273 people. Marcelo Cavazzoli, Lemon Cash’s CEO and cofounder, announced this decision via an open letter to the community.
Lemon Cash is a digital wallet and crypto exchange app. The startup is one of the crypto companies with more financing in Argentina and is backed by investment funds such as DST Global Partners, Valor Capital, GoodWater Capital, CMT Digital and Cadenza.
The layoffs will affect employees in Argentina and Brazil. According to Cavazzoli, this decision will allow the company to face the next three years without having to depend on future investments in a context of very low liquidity at a global level.
Yesterday Bloomberg confirmed that earlier this year, the now bankrupt Crypto Exchange FTX had invested in Lemon Cash. FTX participated as a minority investor in Lemon’s Series A extension, which reached $44.1M. This was one of the largest Series A investment rounds for a startup in Argentine history.
“This was thought of long before the fall of FTX. It has no relation to that process. These are changes in structure, they are not made from one day to the next. It is explained by the context in which startups and the tech industry, in general, are immersed,” explained Cavazzoli.
Lemon Cash still has funds held in FTX, but the company explains that it is not a significant amount, and that there is no longer any expectation of recovering them.
The company also stated it will contribute to the transparency of the ecosystem by implementing a live Proof of Reserves for users in the app. Also, Lemon will restructure its cashback program towards a long-term scalable model.
Read more in BeInCrypto.
