Topic: [Rising on Reddit] Bitpay Reportedly Lays Off Most of Entire Staff (Read 4175 times)

That's why I'm always excited when a new exchange service launches, we need more of them.

alot of merchants also use the bitpay service to accept payments, they should build back up soon.

I really hope that they as an exchange service will continue to function, I rely on them.

They will probably soon get another VC funding round and get back on track. I don't think that bitty will fail, they seem to be a big bitcoin player and I am sure that their investors won't let them "die" like that.

They just flushed 32.5 million down a black hole. This quote pretty much sums up where the company is headed with its current team.



Best chance of survival would be to replace the guy that sent 1.8 million to the wrong person, and that Italian guy that flies around the world burning through cash telling everyone how great the business is doing. Step one in a turn-around must include replacing both these individuals.

Step two. Processing 2000 transactions a day can be handled by 1 or 2 employees, add one for sales and one for reception, and anything over a staff of 5 is overkill. Shift the focus to include payroll integration like bitwage and quit burning cash. That's the best way to right this sinking ship.

what does this say about their wallet, will it get shut down soon too?

But one important thing is that they have to address the security problem. It is obvious that they do not have that process in place and rely on single email for such a big transfer from cold storage!

The logical explanation of this is because the last hack they got , and they probably can't pay everyone now , thats all . (At least I hope)
I don't think there is anything to worry about , they should get back on their feets soon .

This is very bad news for the bitcoin industry. Hope the company can survive the disaster. Pray for the staffs who are being lay off...

I'm more convinced that the hack of $2million is the reason for the lay offs and cost cutting.

simple: everyone who now still works at bitpay now has to work that much harder/smarter or they will fail as a company.

You forget that bitpay themselves were keeping bitcoin on their end..

customers of bitpay could allocate a % of their revenue to keep in USD (or other fiat) and bitcoin.

So yeah bitpay did allow users to choose this. And it wasn't clear cut and dry about converting to fiat 100%.

SO I believe there is a VALUE added in having payment processors to bitcoin.

"who needs merchants anyway?"....<-------------- that is a closed minded way of thinking.

As long as the fiat system exists there will be always the opportunity to add value to the bitcoin ecosystem. The VALUE will not just magically appear into the bitcoin ecosystem. People need to be exposed to it by using bit coin in different ways.

How else are they going to understand how bitcoin work and why it is important if they dont have a viable way to put on TRAINING wheels for the transfer of value from the fiat system to the bitcoin system.

You can't have a clear cut dry merge to bitcoin. This process could take decades.

If the end goal is to have bitcoin be more widely accepted and be more main stream...it will take time and saying that "who needs merchants anyways" is stupid as merchants add value and they help spread the word to others who they know (family friends etc) and that can turn into press as well which is how bitcoin got noticed...through networking of people.

Merchants add value to the bitcoin ecosystem and to turn a blind eye to it saying "it doesn't matter we dont merchants"...is ignorant.

I do believe so. Trace mayer had said something along the lines of bitcoin companies wasting resources on this block size debate and that is why people are being laid off...poor stewardship of investor funds.

So are you saying that if this trend continues with other big bitcoin businesses laying off their employees that it is a bullish signal for bitcoin?

lol

Maybe the "hack" was actually fake and an attempt at insurance fraud, that would be pretty bad. I like using coinbase as an exchange.

I wouldn't be surprised considering how they managed to lose that huge sum of money purportedly through email hack? I doubt... but for whatever reason, I only felt sorry for the employee as these has really nothing got to do with them.

Most of the time the same thing happened in outside world corporate scenario when a wrong decision made by the top management will have the downline employees having to bear the burden and suffer the consequences of the loss. This goes to show how unfair things can get.

Wonder if Jeff Garzik will still have a job there, and for how long?

Also wonder where all that money went ... pay well I guess. I recall someone saying something along the lines of that BitPay was "creaming it" "an absolute money-making machine" (was that Trace Meyer who said that?).

I hear what you all are saying about how we don't need payment processors like Bitpay and how Bitcoin wasn't imagined to work with these processors but to work independently, and I agree with all of this.

But we have to remember one thing, not too many merchants out there would even touch us if there was none of these payment processors. We still need to earn trust, get our price under control, and build our own infrastructure in order to be able to live without Bitpay and others.

Sadly, this is our present and it's like that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5rVjD1XCHE

@20:09 mark, BitPay processes ~2,000 transactions a day, up 30% from 6 months ago. Based on them numbers, I'd love to see what was presented when seeking VC funding to successfully garner $30M+ in capitals.

EDIT: This post was penned prior to me reading the post directly above this one.

Well spotted there MicroGuy. I think the "Couple of thousands of transactions per day" they saw then, will decline to "a couple of hundred transactions per day" after this

fiasco. Tony and Marcel must focus on saving the sinking Titanic, not dancing with the band while it's sinking. Any company would suffer with a $ 1.8 million knock, and

hopefully they will be able to pull it out of the fire. Accept responsibility and publicize the changes that was done to prevent this in future.