GSR Lays Off Less Than 10% of its Staff Citing Long-Term Growth

Market maker GSR laid off less than 10% of its employees in the third quarter of the year.

A spokesperson from the company defines this move as part of structural changes to position the business for long-term growth. This makes GSR the latest in the trend of organizations laying off their employees in the midst of the crispy crypto winter and harsh market conditions.

Further offering an explanation, the spokesperson said, “After a period of rapid expansion, our focus is on improving overall efficiency and continued development of our technology and trading capabilities.” 

GSR which is in the process of building an investment management arm is already a liquidity provider, an over-the-counter (OTC) and options trading desk, and an investor.

As per a statement published on its website, GSR “specializes in providing liquidity, risk management strategies and structured products to sophisticated global investors in the digital assets industry.”

Furthermore, GSR operations are mostly with crypto exchanges, funds, crypto projects, miners, and other financial institutions.

In March, the crypto market maker collaborated with the Ethereum (ETH) based decentralized oracle network (DON) Chainlink to contribute price data to DONs that could be used within the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and smart contract implementations.

Precisely, GSR was meant to contribute highly sophisticated asset pricing data to Chainlink DONs to create tamper-resistant oracle reports.

Part of GSR’s responsibilities in the partnership was to create innovative data products for DeFi in collaboration with Chainlink Labs. Still undergoing development, GSR is delving into Non-fungible token (NFT) market making.

GSR Taps JPMorgan Michael Bressler 

The firm has been around since 2013 when it was founded by Goldman Sachs executives Rich Rosenblum and Cristian Gil. Notably, it is one of the oldest market markers in the crypto industry. GSR has 300 employees across the globe, the website mentioned. 

In July 2021, Co-founder and President of GSR Rosenblum announced plans to increase its 25 headcounts from the previous year to more than 200 in the coming year. Since then, the company had been on track as it immediately onboarded a former JPMorgan executive Michael Bressler to become the Global Head of Sales of the company.