Crypto lender Ledn lays off chief commercial officer in latest industry job cuts

Crypto lender Ledn has laid off several employees amid the crypto crunch.

"Unfortunately, due to the current market conditions, we made the difficult decision to right-size Ledn’s team, and said goodbye to some of our valued team members late last week," Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, Ledn co-founder, said in an email to The Block. "While it was a difficult decision, Ledn is in a privileged position to lead and define the crypto lending industry moving forward. Our team is double the size it was this time last year, and these changes allow us to refocus our efforts on our core retail lending business."

Guido Pettinari, formerly a senior data engineer at Ledn, wrote on LinkedIn, "Several colleagues and myself were laid off at Ledn. This is my first time I got laid off," he said, noting that the cuts were due to "what we all know about FTX."

At least two other people from the company posted about being laid off, including: Lígia Robinson, a former workplace coordinator, and Denis Nagasaki, ex-chief commercial officer.

While it's unclear how many people the company currently employs, there are 102 people on LinkedIn who claim to work for Ledn. The company says it has between 51-200 employees on its LinkedIn profile.

The move comes the same day BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, and less than two weeks since the Canadian crypto firm said it had no exposure to Genesis Global Capital, which halted withdrawals of customer deposits earlier this month amid the collapse of FTX. 

Ledn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Genesis Global Capital was Ledn's primary lending partner at the start of its operations. Ledn since reduced its risk concentration by diversifying its pool of lending partners, Ledn said. The crypto lender added that it did not have any active lending relationship with Genesis beyond October.

Ledn has stated that it had some exposure to Alameda Research, FTX’s sister firm.

Ledn offers lending, savings and trading products to digital asset holders in over 130 countries. The company underwrote Canada’s first-ever bitcoin-backed loan in 2018, and most recently announced the world’s first bitcoin-backed mortgage.