From cointelegraph by Alex O'Donnell

Foundry, the world’s largest Bitcoin BTC$96,259 mining pool, has laid off 27% of its staff amid a planned restructuring, a person familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph on Dec. 3.

The layoffs include 16% of Foundry’s United States-based workforce and a portion of its team in India as well, the person said.

Foundry’s parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG), tipped plans to spin out Foundry’s self-mining business into a separate entity, still controlled by DCG, according to a November shareholder letter shared with Cointelegraph.

“We recently made the strategic decision to focus Foundry on our core business — operating the #1 Bitcoin mining pool in the world and growing our site operations business — while we supported the development of DCG’s newest subsidiaries, including […] the spinout of Foundry’s successful self-mining business,” Foundry told Cointelegraph in a statement.

“As part of this realignment, we made the difficult decision to reduce Foundry’s workforce, resulting in layoffs across multiple teams,” the team said.

Related: Bitcoin miners cut costs, embrace AI post-halving: CoinShares

Market share

Foundry operates Foundry USA, the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world, controlling approximately one-third of the market share among pool operators, according to data from Hashrate Index.

It also runs a self-mining business, which DCG said is on track to earn nearly $80 million in sales in 2024, according to its November investor report.

“We believe this enterprise will be stronger as a standalone business, and so we are spinning it out as a wholly-owned DCG subsidiary,” DCG said in November, adding that “we are bringing external hires with the intent to raise capital.”

Industry adjustments