"If it wasn't for the fall of the crypto market, it wouldn't be like this, right?"
After being awarded a local license for less than a year, leading cryptocurrency exchange company Kraken is closing its headquarters in Abu Dhabi as part of its plan to lay off more than a third of its employees worldwide.
It is already known that Kraken has laid off a number of its team members based in the Middle East and North Africa.
Although Kraken ends transactions in the United Arab Emirates Dirham (AED), customers in the region are still allowed to use the company's platform through its company-backed fiat currency.
While customers who make deposits in AED will automatically be converted to United States (US) dollars.
For the record, Kraken was found to have stopped its operations in Japan last month and intends to reduce their staff by 1,100 individuals by the end of November 2022.
Even so, the company wants to keep its thousands of employees in MENA to further expand their services, commented Benjamin Ampen, Kraken's managing director in the region.
In addition to Kraken, companies such as Coinbase, Crypto.com and Gemini are also laying off workers as crypto trading volumes continue to decline even as digital asset prices since early 2023 see a surge.
