NEM foundation set to fire staff as they near bankruptcy

NEM foundation, the development team behind NEM, announced that they are a month away from going bankrupt. In order to stay afloat, they are going to start laying off a large number of workers in droves. Regarding the laying off, the official community announcement stated:

“The reality of having one month left in funding means we won’t be able to support our current headcount, partnerships, and projects. We need to put everything on hold. This is painful since it hurts good people and partners, but the new council is aligned that we need to be transparent with what is happening behind the scenes of the NEM Foundation.”

NEM foundation will be joining the likes of Bitmain, ConsenSys, Huobi as crypto-based companies who were forced to let go off employees as a result of the ongoing bear market.

Alex Tinsman, the NEM Foundation president, said that the foundation needs 160 million tokens or $7.3 million to survive. He stated that along with the current bear market, the mismanagement from the past council was also to blame for NEM’s current predicament:

“Basically we realized we had a month to operate, due to the mismanagement of the previous governance council. We saw very little accountability for funds and questionable ROI, leading to a burn rate of 9 million XEM per month. In terms of running an effective organization, the existing structure failed. Maybe that didn’t seem like a big problem when the XEM price was high, but it’s a very big problem as we seek to sustain a viable organization in the ‘Crypto Winter.’”