Bitcoin Suisse Plans to Lay Off Up to 60 of 120 Employees in Switzerland and Close Copenhagen IT Development Site
Bitcoin Suisse plans to lay off up to 60 of its 120 employees in Switzerland, restructuring its business and merging software development with back-office functions into an international center, while closing its IT development site in Copenhagen.
The Zug headquarters will remain, but if the maximum cuts are implemented, only about 60 employees will remain in Switzerland; the global workforce is approximately 200. The consultation period ends on September 20, after which the layoffs will take effect, with the first batch expected to occur within the year. The positions being cut are mainly in back-office, administration, and software development, while client-facing roles in consulting, relationship management, and wealth asset management will remain in Switzerland.
The company is consolidating development and back-office functions at its existing hub in Bratislava and plans to establish a new site in Vietnam. The Copenhagen site will be completely closed, and Denmark will exit its operational network. It also has offices in Liechtenstein, Abu Dhabi, and Bermuda. The official statement indicates this is to accelerate expansion, access a broader talent pool, and concentrate funding on subsequent products.
Co-founder and CEO Andrej Majcen characterized this adjustment as a shift from a "Switzerland-centric crypto company" to an international financial services group, targeting high-net-worth individuals, family offices, asset management institutions, and institutional investors. He explained to English media that operating related functions in Slovakia and Vietnam is significantly cheaper and emphasized that this move is not a response to price volatility or financial difficulties. Switzerland will continue to serve as a client-facing business center.
By 2026, the company has secured multiple licenses: the Financial Market Authority of Liechtenstein granted Bitcoin Suisse (Europe) AG a license under the MiCAR framework for crypto asset service providers, allowing it to operate in parts of the European Economic Area; the Bermuda Monetary Authority issued Bitcoin Suisse (International) Ltd. a Class F license for digital asset business and a Class B registration for investment business; and the Abu Dhabi Global Market Financial Regulatory Authority granted BTCS (Middle East) Ltd. a full financial services license. The company publicly claims to manage approximately $3.7 billion in crypto assets and describes itself as one of the leading staking operators globally.
Mechanically, this is a capacity migration driven by costs and licensing, rather than a trading desk-style buy-sell operation. High-salary positions in Switzerland are being reduced, with human resources and development budgets flowing to Eastern Europe and Vietnam; Switzerland retains a high-fee, strong-trust client interface, while low-cost centers take on standardized middle and back-office functions. Beneficiaries include group shareholders and institutional clients looking to expand international coverage and reduce unit service costs; the pressured parties are the development and back-office employees in Zug and Copenhagen, as well as the narrative of Crypto Valley keeping employment density local. The funding path is: Swiss licenses and brand premiums continue to attract clients, while operating expenses overflow into low-cost jurisdictions.
Supplementary structure: Founded in Zug in 2013 by Niklas Nikolajsen and others, Bitcoin Suisse expanded into trading, custody, staking, and lending; Andrej Majcen has served as CEO since January 2024. During the bear market of 2023, the company had already undergone a round of "moderate layoffs" in Switzerland, Denmark, and Liechtenstein, with employees dropping from about 280 at the end of 2021 to around 200-230, and significant revenue declines that year. This latest move comes after securing licenses, further dismantling middle and back-office functions from high-cost nodes.
Source: Public Information
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Bitcoin Suisse started in Zug in 2013, leveraging early Bitcoin brokerage and custody to capture the first wave of retail and high-net-worth traffic in Crypto Valley; by 2021, its workforce surged to about 280, with a budget expansion to 360, but revenue collapsed in 2022 alongside trading activity. In 2023, under Dirk Klee's leadership, layoffs, board streamlining, and a shift towards institutional clients were tied together, with Denmark and Liechtenstein already on the layoff list. During the FTX crisis, its public annual report indicated losses related to that exchange and significant shrinkage in off-balance-sheet custody assets. Leadership turnover has been intense: co-founder Majcen will take over the group in 2024, with Peter Camenzind appointed to lead the Swiss entity in 2025. The path is not a one-time crisis response but a strategy of "first downsizing, then changing the licensing map, and finally relocating middle and back-office functions."
Capital movement is segmented by jurisdiction: Switzerland retains the client interface and wealth management premium; Liechtenstein uses the MiCAR passport to cover the European Economic Area; Bermuda obtains Class F and investment advisory/full discretionary licenses for a professional and institutional mix; Abu Dhabi secures ADGM licenses to connect with Middle Eastern funds and tokenized asset narratives. Bratislava is already an established middle and back-office node, while Vietnam is a cost-effective area being built from scratch. The motivation is a combination of unit labor costs and regulatory arbitrage—Switzerland has high wages and compliance density, but its brand and trust remain valuable; once standardized development and back-office functions are moved out, the same licensing network can serve more jurisdictional clients without needing to linearly expand the workforce in Switzerland.
Similar paths can be seen with Sygnum and SEBA, which turned Swiss banking licenses into institutional entry points before extending outward, as well as Coinbase and Kraken, which moved engineering and support functions to low-cost time zones while keeping licensed entities in regulatory-friendly nodes. The industry phase has shifted from local crypto brokerage expansion from 2017-2021 to a transformation period of "controlling cost bases + using multiple licenses to build wealth management platforms." Bitcoin Suisse, lacking a Swiss banking license, remains reliant on a patchwork of licenses from Liechtenstein, Bermuda, and Abu Dhabi, rather than growing a full-stack team in Zug.
Structural judgment indicates a reconstruction of the industry chain: client acquisition and trust pricing remain in high-regulation, high-salary nodes, while production functions migrate to nodes with more flexible costs and talent supply. The mechanism is that institutional clients are shifting crypto from speculative trading to asset allocation, transitioning the fee model from transaction commissions to custody, consulting, and asset management retention; retained business is sensitive to the scale of middle and back-office functions but not to the density of client managers, thus Swiss positions are transforming from a "fully functional company" to a "front-end window," with pure development sites like Copenhagen losing their reason for independent existence first.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Licenses remain in expensive places, while workforce migrates to cheaper places.
Front-end sells trust, back-end sells time zones.
Expansion often starts by cutting unsustainable local capacity.