Nestcoin Starts Laying off Employees as FTX Collapses

Nestcoin, an African web3 startup has announced that they have laid off some of its employees in the wake of the collapse of FTX.

We are reaching out to share an update on the FTX incident and its impact on Nestcoin. Last year, Nestcoin raised capital from a range of investors, including Alameda Research. For context, Alameda’s equity is less than 1%. We used the closely-associated exchange, FTX, as a custodian to store a significant proportion of the stablecoin investment we raised – i.e. our day-to-day operational budget.

However, last week’s events have had an impact on us, as we held our assets (cash and stablecoins) at FTX to manage our operational expenses. We were not undertaking any trading, but simply custodied our assets on the FTX exchange While there are uncertainties including the outcome of our assets held at FTX, we as a company have to adjust our plans, rethink our strategy and take steps to better position ourselves for the future.

Unfortunately this means saying goodbye to some of our very talented Nesters. As a leadership team, our immediate priority is to conduct this tough task in a compassionate manner and with respect to our departing colleagues.

While this is a challenging time for us and the industry as a whole – we see this as a wake upcall to focus on building a more decentralized crypto future where no one organization or person can amass enough power to influence a nascent industry that has the potential to do good.

In the past few days I’ve strengthened my resolve and remain committed to “doing crypto” in line with its true spirit and founding ethos. At Nestcoin we have a renewed sense of purpose – we realize that for crypto to truly go mainstream, we must accelerate the transition to self custody by building compelling trustless crypto products. To succeed, we will remain relentless, resourceful and flexible as we navigate these hard times.

Yele Bademosi, CEO, Nestcoin