What began as a weekend tumble has led to a full-blown crash for the crypto market. It’s the fourth straight day of dropping prices, with Bitcoin falling a further 13.46 percent in the last 24 hours, slipping to $21,916 at the time of writing.

Ethereum has also taken a beating, plummeting nearly 14 percent since Monday, trading at $1,169 at the time of writing. The rest of the market is also seeing red, with most coins recording double-digit losses over the last few days.

Solana (SOL) is trading at $30.24, an uptick of 7.21 in the last few hours. However, it’s down more than 22 percent over the last week. It’s similar to Cardano (ADA), trading at $0.49, up 2.68 percent over the last 24 hours but down more than 15 percent for the week.

The global crypto market capitalisation has also fallen from $2.19 trillion at the start of 2022 to $927 billion at the time of writing. Collapsing prices have eroded millions of dollars of investor funds almost overnight.

Crypto firms are struggling to navigate the stormy seas, and there seems to be no respite in sight. Now backed into a corner, organisations are compelled to revaluate their operating costs and reduce outgoings to sustain operations.

And one way to do this is through job slashes.

On June 13, crypto lending and trading platform BlockFi announced a 20 percent job cut. This means that 170-200 individuals of its 850-member workforce could get the axe in the coming weeks. BlockFi CEO Zac Prince tweeted that a “dramatic shift in macroeconomic conditions” was to blame for the unfortunate outcome.

Before Prince took such a call, Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com, announced in a series of tweets on June 10 that the firm would be letting go of 5 percent of its workforce as well.

“Our approach is to stay focused on executing against our roadmap and optimising for profitability as we do so,” he tweeted.

Last month, crypto biggies like Coinbase, Gemini and Rain Financial cut jobs, paused all hiring and rescinded existing job offers.

Overwhelming 40-year high inflation levels in the US and diminished demand forced FinTechs to make severe job cuts. Fortune reported that the sector witnessed more job slashes in May 2022 than the four previous months combined.

Market headwinds even forced global lending platforms like the Celsius Network to halt withdrawals for all its 1.7 million customers.

“We understand that this news is difficult, but we believe that our decision to pause withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts is the most responsible action we can take to protect our community. We are working with a singular focus: to protect and preserve assets to meet our obligations to customers,” read the official announcement blog.

The move caused their CEL token to tumble from $0.4 to $0.16 on the same day, a 60 percent collapse. The token was trading at $4.4 at the start of 2022 and has lost 96 percent of its value since then.

But not all crypto firms are sailing in the same boat. At the Consensus 2022 event held recently, Binance CEO Changpen Zhao (popularly known as CZ in the crypto community) said that the company had expansion plans. It would continue hiring and make new acquisitions to expand its footprint.

CZ explained that Binance had not engaged itself in heavy promotional activity and had, therefore, not incurred hefty expenses. On the other hand, Crypto.com expended $700 million in November 2021, and Coinbase formed sports partnerships in October 2021. Both firms have been struggling to stay afloat lately.

“We have a very healthy war chest. We, in fact, are expanding hiring right now,” CZ said at the conference. “If we are in a crypto winter, we will leverage that; we will use that to the max,” he said, adding that the company is “kicking into high gear in terms of M&A activity.”