Bitwise Asset Management layoffs have reduced the firm’s global workforce to roughly 155 employees, a 14% cut that arrives as the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW) has shed roughly a third of its assets since the start of the year.
Chief Executive Hunter Horsley confirmed the reductions in an emailed statement, saying the cuts were completed last week. In his words, the adjustment ‘equips us well for the ongoing growth we’ve seen this year and expect to continue as crypto further integrates into the global economy.’
BITW net assets: what the SEC filings show
The headline 31% asset decline cited by The Block covers the first seven months of 2026, but the quarterly filings add granularity. Per the BITW Q1 2026 10-Q filed with the SEC, crypto assets held at fair value dropped from $1,029,868 thousand at year-end 2025 to $678,167 thousand by March 31, 2026, a decline of approximately 34% in a single quarter.
By June 30, 2026, net assets had compressed further. StockTitan, citing SEC filings, puts the fund’s net assets at $532,787 thousand at that date, with a principal market NAV per share of $37.67. The picture had improved by mid-August: per the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index ETF official page, net assets stood at $711,544,282 as of 19 August 2026, with NAV recovering to $47.43 per share. The quarter-end trough and the August reading are separate data points from different dates, not a conflict.
The BITW Q2 2026 10-Q confirms the June 30 position as the fund’s lowest point in the reporting period covered by that filing.
Bitwise Asset Management layoffs follow an acquisitive stretch
The staff reductions follow a period in which Bitwise was actively adding businesses. On 24 February 2026, the firm announced the acquisition of Chorus One, an institutional staking provider that had over $2.2 billion in staked assets at the time, according to PrivSource. Chorus One became part of Bitwise Onchain Solutions (BOS), the firm’s staking division, per the Bitwise newsroom announcement.
Horsley described the rationale at the time: ‘Chorus One is best-in-class across technology and research, with an eight-year track record of doing things the right way.’
Product launches continued alongside the deal activity. In May, Bitwise’s Hyperliquid ETF pulled in roughly $19 million in inflows on a single trading day, its largest daily figure at the time, with Horsley citing approximately $22 million in total trading volume that session. The fund launched on the New York Stock Exchange on 15 May with a 0.34% sponsor fee, waived for the first month on the first $500 million in assets.
Demand extended to other altcoin products as well. In June, Horsley said Bitwise’s XRP exchange-traded products in the US and Europe had accumulated more than $200 million in inflows since the start of 2026.
Sector-wide headcount reductions in 2026
The Bitwise cut sits inside a wider pattern. BitGo trimmed nearly 15% of its workforce in June, redirecting resources toward security, trading, stablecoins, settlement and AI infrastructure. With 603 full-time employees at the end of 2025, a 15% reduction represents roughly 90 positions. BitGo’s Chief Executive Mike Belshe described it as a one-time action. The firm had raised approximately $212.8 million through a January IPO priced at $18 per share, and its shares remained below that level at the time of the cuts.
Coinbase announced a comparable 14% reduction in May, with Chief Executive Brian Armstrong citing both the market cycle and expanded use of AI tools, which he said allowed smaller teams to move faster. Kraken reportedly cut around 150 positions in the same month as it also expanded AI usage, a move Bloomberg said could push the exchange’s planned US listing into 2027. Dune Analytics followed with a 25% reduction, and Polygon Labs made further cuts in July while reorganising around payments following its acquisition of Coinme and Sequence, deals that cost the company more than $250 million combined.
CIO sees a potential Bitcoin floor
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told Bloomberg that Bitcoin’s resilience through recent negative catalysts, including delays to the CLARITY Act and Strategy’s disclosure of a 3,588 BTC sale for roughly $216 million to fund dividends on its Digital Credit securities, may indicate the bear market has already bottomed. Bitcoin had briefly dipped before recovering toward the $63,000 area after that disclosure.
Hougan also named large wealth management platforms as a potential ‘quiet catalyst’ for the next bull run, putting institutional distribution at the centre of his recovery thesis. Whether that distribution materialises before the fund’s AUM recovers its year-start level is the immediate question for Bitwise’s revenue line.
