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Bitcoin Financial Services Firm Unchained Capital Cutting Staff, Reshuffling Management

While the company has no exposure to FTX, the extended bitcoin bear market is taking a toll on parts of the business.

Updated May 9, 2023, 4:03 a.m. Published Nov 18, 2022, 10:32 p.m.

Unchained Capital reduced its workforce by about 15% and moved its head of business development, Parker Lewis, to the board of directors. Chief Product Officer Will Cole was moved to a senior advisory role.

In a blog post discussing the jobs cuts, co-founder and CEO Joe Kelly said on Friday that while Unchained has never had exposure to FTX, Alameda or any other institutions that have lost client funds, "funding for bitcoin-backed loans has been materially constrained by recent market events."

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He noted that his company is seeing record numbers of new clients, bitcoin deposits and trading volumes, and the loan book currently has a 214% collateral-to-principal ratio.

"We have admittedly made mistakes along the way," wrote Parker Lewis in a separate blog post discussing the moves. "Despite having weathered every storm without incurring a loan loss, we expanded the team quicker than we otherwise would have had we better accounted for the current market environment."

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Stephen Alpher

Stephen is CoinDesk's managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.