Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees amid turmoil in crypto market

The exchange is reducing its workforce by roughly 18%. CEO Armstrong admits the company grew too quickly.

June 15, 2022

In appraisal season, 1000s of employees become jobless as Coinbase cut costs after crash

Leading crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that it is laying off 18 percent of its workforce, or about 1,100 jobs amid the economic downturn.

CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong said that while the company tried its best to get this just right, in this case, it is now clear that it is over-hired.

Armstrong said, “We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period.”

He added, “In past crypto winters, trading revenue (our largest revenue source) has declined significantly. While it is hard to predict the economy or the markets, we always plan for the worst so we can operate the business through any environment.”

The company said that at the beginning of 2021, it had 1,250 employees.

“At the time, we were in the early innings of the bull run, and adoption of crypto products was exploding. There were new use cases enabled by crypto getting traction practically every week,” Armstrong said.

“We saw the opportunities but we needed to massively scale our team to be positioned to compete in a broad array of bets. It’s challenging to grow at just the right pace given the scale of our growth,” he added.

[With Inputs from IANS]

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