"Today, we let 37 employees go, reducing the size of our team by a third. It is a deep and painful reduction, mirrored across many crypto companies in this latest bear market cycle." In this way, Switzerland based cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift started a blog post announcing the lay off of the third of its team on January 8. ShapeShift, a desktop and mobile crypto exchange platform was founded in 2013 by Erik Voorhees in Switzerland. The company experienced the Crypto boom since 2013 and the madness in the last quarter of 2018. Then, it also suffered from the crypto collapse in 2018. "Crypto, like the moon we strive toward, is a harsh mistress. We ride high and fast during the ascents, growing at rates unseen almost anywhere else in the business world (ShapeShift grew 3,000% in 2017)," the company highlighted. "And when the markets turn, the crypto recession is similarly dramatic and severe." ShapeShift is having a hard "crypto winter" following falling crypto prices and weak growth in clients acquisition. The post also said that the company "got hit from four sides" including regulation, structural issues, financial issues and problems with customers. According to the blog post, the company grow so fast too soon. Moreover, they had problems with the scaling and the problem to manage an ever growing team. Also, the company suffering legal problems "Our own growth coupled with that of the industry meant increasing scrutiny. The grey area within which we were once comfortable was feeling less so. So we started exploring every nuance of complex financial services regulation. As we stepped into this mire, immense legal bills and risk assessment forced resources to be diverted away from important parts of the company." Customers were an issue too, as business was down from market recession and increasing competition, "Our imposition of KYC’d accounts, themselves the result of trying to be cautious in a challenging regulatory environment, caused many of our most valuable API partners to leave us for competitors who have not perceived regulatory risks in the same way." Finally, financial issues came along as balance sheet returning to earth as asset prices were falling. "We were partially hedged, and while we were not naive to the risks, by the early December drop, it dictated material course correction."