Australia's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange Swyftx has cut close to 20% of its staff and replaced chief executive Jason Titman after less than two years in the role, in the most significant restructure the Brisbane-based company has undertaken since the post-FTX downturn of 2022.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported the company confirmed the move on Thursday, with co-founder Alex Harper and former chief financial officer Andrea Yuen named acting co-chief executives. Titman, who had joined Swyftx as an adviser before stepping into the top job in mid-2024, departs immediately. The board also appointed Cathryn Lyall as acting chair.
In a statement to SMH, a Swyftx spokesman framed the cuts as a structural response to two acquisitions completed over the past 12 months — New Zealand exchange Easy Crypto, bought for $32.9 million in March 2025, and US-focused boutique brokerage Caleb Brown, picked up for more than $100 million in October.
"The Swyftx Group has increased in size and complexity over the last 12 months following two major acquisitions," the spokesman said. "We needed to restructure the business to remove duplication, simplify our operations and capture efficiencies. Unfortunately, the proposals have resulted in a number of roles being put at risk of redundancy as we bring our teams together."
The company said it remained in consultation with affected staff and that the final headcount figure was not yet locked in.
Lyall, in turn, framed the leadership reset as deliberately positioning Harper and Yuen for the regulatory environment now bearing down on the sector. She told SMH the pair were "uniquely well-placed" to lead the business, pointing specifically to the looming regulatory reset as the board's central consideration. Yuen, who joined Swyftx as CFO in January 2025, had previously held senior roles at PwC, Lazard and IRG.
The broader market context is unforgiving. Bitcoin, which printed all-time highs above $US126,000 — roughly $A178,000 — in late 2025 on a wave of institutional inflows and Trump-administration crypto enthusiasm, has since retraced sharply as the same administration's tariff agenda and a hardening Iran shock have squeezed risk assets. The Brisbane operation's revenue base, like every retail exchange's, is correlated almost one-for-one with that volume cycle.
Founded in 2018 by 31-year-old school friends Alex Harper and Angus Goldman, Swyftx rode the 2021 bull market to become Australia's number-two crypto exchange before the 2022 industry-wide crisis exposed how fragile that growth model could be. Harper and Goldman remain the company's largest shareholders.
This is not Swyftx's first acquaintance with redundancies under stress. The exchange fired 90 employees — roughly 35% of its workforce — in December 2022 amid the broader crypto downturn that followed FTX's collapse, on top of an earlier round of 74 redundancies in the same year. The carnage produced a $135 million loss in the 2023 financial year on revenue that had fallen more than 70% from its 2021 peak.
A planned $1.5 billion merger with budget stockbroker Superhero, which would have stood up a combined wealth-management platform across crypto, equities and superannuation, also collapsed in December 2022 amid regulatory hostility and governance concerns.
Since then, Swyftx had recovered aggressively, committing tens of millions of dollars to sports sponsorships, including a two-year naming-rights deal with Super Rugby Pacific and partnerships with the Brisbane Lions, NRL and Big Bash League, in a calculated bid to take the brand mainstream. The current restructure does not formally touch those deals, but it does land at the moment Australia's first comprehensive digital-assets legislation comes into force, with platforms required to comply with full financial-services licensing obligations by the end of June.
Lyall's regulatory framing is therefore not incidental. The leadership reshuffle puts a co-founder back at the top of the operating chart and a finance-trained former CFO alongside him at exactly the moment the regulator wants licensed, accountable platforms — and at a moment when the bitcoin price chart is doing none of the favours it was doing six months ago.
For Swyftx, the equation has become brutally simple. Two big acquisitions need integrating, the cycle has turned against trading volumes, and the board has decided the operators that built the company are the ones it wants steering through the next regulatory regime — even if that means asking 20% of its staff to go.