Coinbase to lay off around 1,000 employees as crypto contagion deepens
Nickie Louise
Posted On January 10, 2023
Just a few days after Coinbase agreed to pay $100 million to settle with US regulators over anti-money-laundering law violations, the crypto exchange giant announced Tuesday that it will reduce its workforce by about 950 employees as part of the cost-cutting measures and restructuring plan.
In a statement, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company expects to incur about $149 million to $163 million in restructuring expenses in the latest round of job cuts. “We also saw the fallout from unscrupulous actors in the industry, and there could still be further contagion,” Armstrong said in a blog post. “We will be shutting down several projects where we have a lower probability of success.”
Coinbase is the latest in a series of crypto companies to announce layoffs amid the sluggish crypto market and the contagion of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. As we reported last week, crypto lender Genesis also laid off 30% of its workforce in a second round of layoffs in less than six months.
This is Coinbase’s third round of layoffs since last year. In June 2022, Coinbase laid off 1,100 employees, or about 18% of its workforce.
“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,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in June.
According to data from Layoffs.FYI, a site that has been tracking all tech layoffs using data compiled from public reports, 36 tech companies laid off a total of 18,392 tech workers in the first week of January.
Founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, the San Francisco, California-based Coinbase is a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with new digital currencies like bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Since its inception nine years ago, Coinbase has raised a total of $847.3 million in funding over 14 rounds. Its latest funding was raised on December 21, 2018, from a secondary market round.
