Ethereum Chat Startup Status Lays Off 25% of Staff

IM is cutting a quarter of its staff due to the ongoing downturn in cryptocurrency prices.

Announcing the move internally on Monday, co-founder Jarrad Hope said that the startup is much larger than can be sustained due to the fact that the company did not anticipate ethereum's price dropping more than 80 percent.

The company originally raised 182,000 ETH during a token sale last year, which was worth $64 million at the time.

IM cut 25 percent of its staff - about 25 individuals - on Monday.

The company is looking to stretch its fiat currency holdings to cover its expenses for roughly another six months.

Status is also asking current employees to accept pay cuts, "Which will alleviate as the market picks up," Hope said.

Employees will then receive a greater amount of SNT tokens "To help offset the cut."

Naghdy told CoinDesk that, despite the cuts, "We continue to have a large and stable engineering team" working on both the white paper promises and an ethereum 2.0 implementation dubbed Nimbus.

Aside from the fiat holdings, Status has roughly 190,000 ETH to tap as a resource, Naghdy said.

The company's six-month runway is solely based on the fiat holdings, and the company does not have any current plans to pursue further fundraising.