SINGAPORE – A co-founder of Cake DeFi, which operates a Singapore-based online platform that offers access to decentralised finance services and products, has filed for the company to be wound up. A winding up notice in The Straits Times on Dec 7 showed that the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer Chua U-Zyn, represented by law firm Rajah & Tann Singapore, had filed an application with the High Court on Dec 1.
ST has contacted the group for comments.
This development comes after the group in mid-November announced it would cut 30 per cent of its staff. The group’s co-founder and chief executive Julian Hosp had said in a Nov 14 blog that 52 people would be cut in a restructuring exercise across the Singapore and Kuala Lumpur offices. This would bring the team down to about 125.
Dr Hosp said the team grew quickly in 2020 and 2021, when the digital assets market was buoyant. “We grew operating costs too quickly. We underestimated both the longevity and extent of a broader slowdown in the crypto landscape, and the impact it would have on investor sentiment,” he wrote.
The news comes in the wake of a crypto winter that some are hoping will taper off soon as institutional players enter the scene, either focusing on tokenisation of real world assets like bonds and securities or issuing their own stablecoins. The sector’s downturn started in 2022 with the fall of many known names in the cryptocurrency space, including the Terra/Luna tokens, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and exchange FTX.