Finance12 August, 20262 min read
Bitwise Cuts 14% of Staff After Acquiring Chorus One Engineers
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Bitwise cut 14% of staff, reducing headcount to about 155 from ~180. Layoffs occur six months after acquiring Chorus One’s 50 engineers.
Bitwise trims staff
Bitwise cut 14% of its staff, reducing its workforce from around 180 to roughly 155, six months after acquiring Chorus One’s 50 engineers. CryptoRank said the cut left Bitwise with a headcount of about 155 and noted that its BITW crypto index fund lost 48.27% of net assets.
PYMNTS reported that Bitwise offers crypto products including exchange-traded funds, including a $2.3 billion bitcoin ETF, and that the firm oversees upwards of 70 products and commands about $9 billion in assets. Yahoo Finance added that Bitwise’s fund holds about $2.3 billion, under 3% of the total, while Bitcoin fell to around $64,000 after the record it set in October 2025.
CEO frames the cuts
Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley told Bloomberg that even after the layoffs, the company’s staffing levels were at their highest point to date and that it expects growth to continue as crypto becomes more embedded into the world economy. Cryptonews.net said Horsley confirmed the layoffs in an emailed statement and that the staff reduction was completed last week, leaving the company positioned to continue expanding its business.
In a separate account, Cointelegraph reported that a Bitwise spokesperson confirmed to Cointelegraph on Wednesday that it had laid off about 25 people amid a crypto market downturn. Bloomingbit likewise said Horsley added that growth will continue as crypto becomes more deeply integrated into the global economy, while noting that Bitwise manages more than 70 crypto products and has total assets under management of about $9 billion.
ETF and staking shift
While Bitwise reduced headcount, Fidelity filed a pre-effective amendment on Aug. 11 to let its spot Ethereum ETF, FETH, stake the Ethereum it holds and pay rewards to investors as quarterly cash distributions.
Decrypt said the fund would stake up to 100% of its holdings, and it described Fidelity as asking the SEC for permission to turn its spot Ethereum ETF into a yield-bearing product.
Decrypt also said FETH would route its ETH through custodians including Anchorage Digital, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets to one or more node operators, and that the change would rewrite the fund's stated objective.
The same Decrypt report said the filing is blunt that distributions aren't guaranteed and that Fidelity can suspend or end them at its discretion, while also noting that FETH launched with the first U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs in 2024 and charges a 0.25% fee.