TLDR:

• Over 450 crypto jobs have been cut in weeks, with Gemini, Algorand, and Crypto.com leading the layoffs in early 2026.
  
• New crypto job postings dropped roughly 80% year-over-year, averaging just 6.5 listings per day in January 2026.
  
• Companies like Gemini and Crypto.com blamed AI integration for workforce reductions, shifting toward leaner operations.
  
• Industry experts say AI is not the real cause — collapsed sectors like restaking, DePIN, and L2s are driving most cuts.

Crypto layoffs are accelerating in early 2026, with several major firms cutting hundreds of jobs within weeks. Algorand Foundation, Gemini, Crypto.com, OP Labs, and PIP Labs have all trimmed their workforces recently.

Companies cite weak market conditions, falling token prices, and AI integration as primary reasons. New job postings on major crypto boards have dropped roughly 80% year-over-year. Industry observers warn the visible cuts may only be the beginning of a deeper contraction across the sector.

A Wave of Job Cuts Sweeps Across the Industry

The Algorand Foundation announced on Wednesday it was cutting 25% of its staff. The foundation employs fewer than 200 people, meaning roughly 50 positions were eliminated.

The company cited “the uncertain global macro environment” and a broader crypto market downturn as driving factors.

Gemini announced around 200 layoffs in February, equal to roughly a quarter of its staff. That figure climbed to 30% by mid-March.

In a shareholder letter, the company stated, “AI is now too powerful not to use at Gemini,” adding that not using AI would soon be like arriving to work with a typewriter instead of a laptop.

Crypto.com then announced it was trimming 12% of its workforce, equivalent to about 180 roles. A company spokesperson told CoinDesk, “We are joining the list of companies integrating enterprise-wide AI,” pointing to greater efficiencies that require fewer workers. CEO Kris Marszalek posted on X that companies failing to adopt AI into their processes would ultimately fail.

OP Labs, the team behind layer-2 blockchain Optimism, cut 20 employees earlier this month. PIP Labs, the team behind Story Protocol, let go of five full-time staff and three contractors. Those cuts represented approximately 10% of PIP Labs’ total workforce.

Messari, a crypto data provider now billing itself as an AI-first company, announced its third round of layoffs since 2023.

The firm once targeted a team of 1,000 analysts but now employs roughly 140 people. A CEO change also accompanied the announcement, though Messari did not disclose exact numbers.

Industry Consolidation Points to a Deeper Contraction

Excluding Messari, the companies mentioned above have announced around 450 job cuts in just a few weeks. That tally could grow, as the full scope of industry cuts typically takes months to emerge. During the crypto winter of 2022, CoinDesk tracked over 26,000 job losses across the full year.

New job postings on major crypto job boards averaged roughly 6.5 per day in January 2026. That figure is down approximately 80% compared to the same period a year earlier. The steep decline reflects a market pulling back sharply on new hiring activity.

Dan Escow, founder of crypto recruitment agency Up Top, challenged the AI-driven narrative directly. He said, “I see no real indication that these layoffs have anything to do with AI workforce replacement at scale.” He added that entire sectors like restaking, DePIN, and L2s that were once full of talent are now “basically non-existent.”

Escow further stated that companies are “forced into cost-cutting mode to buy time to figure out how to execute on whatever comes next.”

That assessment aligns with Algorand’s cuts, which hit community management and business development roles. Those are not positions typically displaced by AI tools.

Algorand’s ALGO token recently traded around $0.09, down 98% from its 2019 peak. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has lost 20% this quarter alone. M&A activity is also adding to redundancies, as acqui-hires continue displacing legacy staff across the sector.

XRP slipped lower after another failed recovery attempt, with high-volume selling pushing the token back toward key support near $1.40.

News Background

• XRP remains stuck in a broader corrective phase that has persisted since its mid-2025 peak, with rallies consistently failing to build follow-through.
• The latest pullback comes after a brief mid-March rebound stalled below $1.60, reinforcing the pattern of lower highs that has defined price action in recent months.
• Macro conditions continue to weigh on sentiment, with crypto markets trading cautiously following the Federal Reserve’s latest policy stance. XRP’s structure remains largely technical, with traders focused on whether the token can stabilize or continue drifting lower within its established range.

Price Action Summary

• XRP fell from $1.4457 to $1.4079, down roughly 2.6%
• Price traded near $1.44–$1.45 before breaking down late in the session
• Selling accelerated on a volume spike more than 3x the daily average
• The token stabilized near $1.40 after setting a low around $1.4018

Technical Analysis

• The key move was the late-session break below $1.44 support, which triggered a sharp drop on elevated volume — a sign of active selling rather than passive drift.
• Short-term structure remains weak. XRP continues to form lower highs, and recent recovery attempts have stalled below $1.60, keeping the broader downtrend intact.
• The $1.40 area is now acting as immediate support, with buyers stepping in after the breakdown. A minor bounce has formed, but price remains below prior support levels that have now turned into resistance.
• On higher timeframes, XRP is still trading within a descending channel that has guided price since mid-2025, reinforcing the idea that rallies are corrective unless key resistance levels are reclaimed.

What traders say is next?

• Traders are focused on whether XRP can hold above $1.40.
• If support stabilizes, the token may consolidate before attempting another move toward $1.44–$1.45, with a broader test near $1.55–$1.60 needed to shift momentum.
• If $1.40 breaks, downside risk opens toward the $1.30–$1.32 zone, where weaker support lies and previous moves have lacked strong buyer interest.

The math has turned against bitcoin miners, and the war is making it worse every week.

Checkonchain’s difficulty regression model, which estimates average production costs based on network difficulty and energy inputs, pegged the figure at $88,000 per bitcoin as of March 13.

Bitcoin is trading at $69,200 as on Sunday morning, creating a gap of nearly $19,000 per coin and meaning the average miner is operating at a 21% loss on every block produced.

The cost squeeze has been building since October’s crash took bitcoin from $126,000 to below $70,000, but the Iran war accelerated it. Oil above $100 feeds directly into electricity costs for mining operations, particularly the estimated 8-10% of global hashrate operating in energy markets sensitive to Middle Eastern supply.

The Strait of Hormuz, which handles roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows, remains effectively closed to most commercial traffic. And Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum on Saturday threatening to attack Iran’s power plants added a new layer of risk for miners.

The network is already showing the stress. Difficulty dropped 7.76% on Saturday to 133.79 trillion, the second-largest negative adjustment of 2026 after February’s 11.16% plunge during Winter Storm Fern. Difficulty is now nearly 10% below where it started the year and far below November 2025’s all-time high near 155 trillion.

The hashrate has retreated to roughly 920 EH/s, well below the record 1 zetahash level reached in 2025. Average block times during the last epoch stretched to 12 minutes and 36 seconds, well above the 10-minute target.

Hashprice, the metric tracking expected miner revenue per unit of computing power, is hovering around $33.30 per petahash per second per day according to Luxor’s Hashrate Index. That’s near breakeven for most hardware and not far from the all-time low of $28 hit on Feb. 23.

When miners can’t cover costs, they sell bitcoin to fund operations. That selling adds supply pressure to a market already dealing with 43% of total supply sitting at a loss, whales distributing into rallies, and leveraged positioning dominating price action. Mining economics aren’t just a sector story. They’re a market structure story.

The publicly traded miners have been adapting by diversifying into AI and high-performance computing, which offer more predictable revenue than mining bitcoin at a loss. Marathon Digital, Cipher Mining, and others have been building out data center capacity alongside their mining operations.

The next difficulty adjustment is projected for early April and is expected to decline further according to CoinWarz data. If bitcoin stays below $88,000, and there’s no sign of a return to that level in the near term, the miner exodus continues and difficulty keeps falling.

The network self-corrects by design, making it cheaper to mine as participants leave. But the period between when costs exceed revenue and when difficulty adjusts low enough to restore profitability is where the damage happens, both to miners and to the spot market absorbing their forced selling.

Bitcoin has given back last week’s gains in a single weekend.

The largest cryptocurrency slid to $69,192 on Sunday morning, down 2.2% over the past 24 hours and 3.1% on the week, after U.S. president Donald Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran late Saturday demanding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks on the country’s power plants.

Trump said he would “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants, beginning with the largest, if the strait wasn’t opened to commercial shipping.

The threat marks a dramatic escalation from Friday, when Trump said he was thinking about “winding down” the military operation. Going from winding down to threatening civilian infrastructure in 24 hours whipsawed a market that had spent the previous week building confidence around de-escalation.

The liquidation data shows how one-sided the positioning was heading into the weekend. CoinGlass data shows $299 million in total liquidations over the past 24 hours across 84,239 traders, with long liquidations accounting for $254 million, roughly 85% of the total.

Bitcoin longs took $122 million in damage. Ether longs lost $95.7 million. The largest single liquidation was a $10 million BTC-USDT swap on OKX. The lopsided ratio confirms the market was leaning heavily bullish after eight consecutive days of gains heading into the weekend, leaving it vulnerable to exactly this kind of headline shock.

Major tokens fell in lockstep, meanwhile. Ether dropped 1.8% to $2,114, XRP lost 2.5% to $1.41, BNB slid 1.4% to $633, solana fell 2.1% to $88.55, and dogecoin lost 2.7% to $0.092. The only majors green on the week were ether at 0.8% and solana at 0.7%. Everything else is red over seven days.

The 48-hour window means the deadline arrives Monday evening. If Iran doesn’t comply, and there’s no indication it will, the market faces the prospect of strikes on power infrastructure, which would be the first direct targeting of civilian energy systems in the conflict.

The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to most commercial traffic, with roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows still disrupted.

Last week’s rally to $75,912 now looks like it was built on ceasefire speculation that evaporated over the weekend. The Fed held rates on Wednesday with a dovish lean that should have supported risk assets, but the persistent risk of war headlines has traders holding back from making outsized directional bets.

TLDR:

• Bitcoin put/call open interest ratio averaged 0.77, its highest reading since China banned mining in June 2021. 
• Put premiums relative to BTC spot volume hit an all-time high of 4 basis points, tripling mid-2022 levels.
• Historical data shows D9 skew decile has produced average 90-day BTC returns of +13.2%, the strongest of all deciles.
• Aggregate miner BTC balances sit at 684,000 BTC, with miners selling nearly all newly issued supply over the past year.

Bitcoin markets entered a consolidation phase following a sharp price drawdown in early 2026. VanEck’s mid-March Bitcoin ChainCheck report reveals deeply defensive positioning across derivatives markets.

The put/call open interest ratio reached its highest level since June 2021. Realized volatility dropped from 80 to 50, while futures funding rates fell to 2.7%. Onchain activity declined broadly as miner revenues came under pressure.

Bitcoin Options Positioning Reflects Elevated Demand for Downside Protection

Bitcoin options markets are showing an unusual level of caution among investors. The put/call open interest ratio peaked at 0.84 and averaged 0.77 over the past month.

This places the metric in the 91st percentile of all observations recorded since mid-2019. The last time the ratio reached these levels was June 2021, when China banned Bitcoin mining.

Total put premiums over the past 30 days reached approximately $685 million. That figure represents a 24% decline month-over-month, yet it still exceeds 77% of monthly readings since early 2025.

Relative to spot volume, put premiums hit an all-time high of roughly 4 basis points. This is about three times the levels seen after the Terra/Luna collapse in mid-2022.

Meanwhile, call option premiums fell roughly 12% to around $562 million. This decline further confirms a broad shift toward protective positioning in the market.

Total options open interest still rose 3% month-over-month to $33.4 billion. Futures leverage, however, remained subdued throughout the period.

VanEck’s report also examined the put/call premiums paid ratio, which reached 2.0 for the 30-day period ending March 3, 2026. Implied volatility on puts averaged around 66, sitting approximately 16 points above realized volatility.

Historically, skew readings at this decile have preceded average 90-day Bitcoin returns of +13.2%. Average 360-day returns from similar readings came in at +133.2%.

Onchain Activity and Miner Economics Show Broad Pressure

Onchain network activity declined across nearly every major metric over the past month. Transfer volume fell 31%, while total daily fees dropped 27%.

Daily active addresses declined 5%, and mean transaction fees fell by 40%. Transaction count was the only category that posted a modest increase.

A growing share of Bitcoin trading now occurs through ETPs, derivatives, and centralized exchanges. As a result, traditional onchain metrics may no longer capture total market activity accurately.

This shift makes it harder to use network data alone as a sentiment indicator. The trend reflects Bitcoin’s increasing financialization across institutional markets.

On the miner side, total revenues declined 11% over the past month. Mining equities fell roughly 7%, pointing to weaker profitability across the sector.

Miner outflows to exchanges rose only 1% in Bitcoin terms. Most operators appear to be managing reserves carefully rather than liquidating holdings.

Aggregate miner balances currently sit at approximately 684,000 BTC, down only 0.5% year-over-year. Over the same period, roughly 164,000 new BTC were mined and effectively sold.

Long-term holder transfer volume declined across every age cohort during the period. Active long-term Bitcoin supply also edged down from 31% to 30%.

A stablecoin tied to the crypto project Resolv Labs has lost its peg to the US dollar after an attacker was able to exploit the token’s contract to create millions of tokens for themselves.

Resolv Labs posted to X on Sunday that it had experienced an exploit that allowed an attacker to mint 50 million unbacked Resolv USR (USR). “The team has currently paused all the protocol functions to prevent further malicious actions and is actively working on recovery,” it added.

The X account “yieldsandmore” had posted to the platform earlier on Sunday that USR had crashed after on-chain data showed an attacker was able to mint 50 million USR by depositing $100,000 worth of the stablecoin USDC (USDC).

The attacker was also able to mint an additional 30 million USR tokens, according to the crypto security company PeckShield.

The crypto fund D2 Finance said that the minting function on USR’s contract was somehow broken. “Either the oracle was gamed, the off-chain signer was compromised, or the amount validation between request and completion is simply missing,” it added.

The exploit comes after crypto-related hacks declined sharply in February, with $49 million lost to exploits over the month, compared to $385 million in January, with attackers increasingly preferring phishing scams over protocol exploits.

Attacker cashing out “at full speed” depegs USR 

D2 Finance said the attacker quickly moved the 50 million USR they minted to multiple crypto protocols, swapping the tokens for the stablecoins USDC and USDt (USDT) before “aggressively” converting them to Ether (ETH).

“The attacker’s exit playbook is textbook DeFi hack cashout running at full speed,” it said.

D2 Finance added that USR was selling as low as 50 cents on some trades as liquidity and slippage worsened across protocols, with “multiple failed transactions visible on-chain showing the urgency.”

The firm estimated that the attacker was able to extract around $25 million from the attack amid USR’s depeg.

Related: Google Threat Intel flags ‘Ghostblade’ crypto-stealing malware

USR is currently trading at around 87 cents, around 13% off from the $1 peg the token aims to maintain, according to CoinGecko.

The token had crashed to a low of 2.5 cents on a USR/USDC pool on the protocol Curve Finance, USR’s most liquid pool with a 24-hour volume of $3.6 million, per DEX Screener.

USR hit its bottom on Curve at 2:38 am UTC on Sunday, just 17 minutes after the attacker minted $50 million worth of the token. The pool has since recovered to trade at 84.5 cents.

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