Coinbase

Crypto exchange Coinbase slashes staff by 18% amid bear market

After initially slowing down hiring, Coinbase announced plans to reduce its headcount by 18%, with the CEO citing a starting economic recession.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong officially announced on Tuesday that he made a “difficult decision” to reduce the size of the Coinbase team by about 18% due to a starting economic recession.

“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,” Armstrong wrote. He added that the trading revenue significantly declined during past crypto winters, noting that Coinbase has survived through four major crypto winters since its foundation in 2012.

Armstrong emphasized that the firm has been growing “too quickly,” with Coinbase’s headcount reaching 1,250 employees as of early 2021. According to the CEO, the team has grown four times in the past 18 months and their employee costs are “too high to effectively manage this uncertain market.”

According to the announcement, all departing employees will receive support in finding a new role, including a minimum of 14 weeks of severance as well as an additional two weeks for every year of employment beyond one year. Additional support includes four months of health insurance in the United States and four months of mental health support globally.

Coinbase’s massive layoff announcement came shortly after Armstrong took to Twitter on Friday to criticize its employees for issuing a public petition to remove some senior Coinbase executives in a vote of no confidence. The petition specifically called for the removal of chief operating officer Emilie Choi, chief product officer Surojit Chatterjee as well as chief people officer LJ Brock.

According to the petition’s authors, Coinbase’s executive team has been making decisions that were “not in the best interests of the company, its employees, and its shareholders.” The petitioners argued that those decisions led to results like the failure of the Coinbase NFT platform, toxic workplace culture and an apathetic attitude exhibited by senior management and others.

Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is cutting its headcount amid Bitcoin hitting its two-year lows around $21,000.

Coinbase previously announced in May that it would slow down hiring and reassess its headcount to ensure it continues operating as planned.

In announcing a new massive layoff, Coinbase joins the growing list of firms that had to cut their staff amid the ongoing bear market, including Winklevoss brothers-founded Gemini, crypto-friendly trading platform Robinhood and the BlockFi trading platform, which said it was laying off 20% of its staff on Monday.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek also took to Twitter on Saturday to announce that the Singapore-based exchange would lay off 260 workers, or 5% of its workforce.

Related: FTX will not freeze hiring amid layoffs at other crypto firms, CEO states

Despite some crypto companies increasingly reducing the size of their teams, others continue hunting for new talent. Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, is still hiring, having more than 2,000 roles open for engineers, product, marketing and business developers.

“The crypto space is still in its early stages, and bull markets tend to care more about price while bear markets have more value-conscious teams that continue to build the industry. We see this as a great time to bring on top talent,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said.

Armstrong tweets in public airing of Coinbase’s internal discontent

The petition was quickly removed, and the number of signatures was not shown, but its list of objections to the Coinbase status quo got a big reaction from the CEO.

A disgruntled Coinbase employee, identified only as 0x58E3, created a petition on Mirror.xyz on Thursday calling for the removal of three company executives. The petition, titled Operation Revive COIN, has been taken down, but it was captured by the Internet Archive and other websites. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong responded to it at length on Twitter. 

Coinbase chief operating officer Emilie Choi, chief product officer Surojit Chatterjee and chief people officer LJ Brock were the targets of the call for removal for “executing plans and ideas that have led to questionable results and negative values.” The author listed eight of their failings in detail. They included the unsuccessful Coinbase NFT platform, rescinding job offers to new employees, mismanagement, creating a toxic workplace and apathy. The petition concluded:

“We hope to find people who have had experience in the crypto space and can run such a company more responsibly.”

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter on Friday morning with a series of 16 tweets. Among other things, he tells the petitioners that, “Our culture is to praise in public, and criticize in private.” Armstrong also said he was surprised that he was not on the petitioners’ list of executives to dismiss and suggested that the unhappy employees are the ones who should leave their jobs.

Related: Coinbase offers ‘thousands of tokens’ in expanded swap service

Coinbase shares took a beating on the market in May along when the entire crypto industry was hit with instability, leading to concern among shareholders and customers. It was also the subject of insider trading rumors recently.

Armstrong tweets in public airing of Coinbase’s internal discontent

The petition was quickly removed, and the number of signatures was not shown, but its list of objections to the Coinbase status quo got a big reaction from the CEO.

A disgruntled Coinbase employee, identified only as 0x58E3, created a petition on Mirror.xyz on Thursday calling for the removal of three company executives. The petition, titled Operation Revive COIN, has been taken down, but it was captured by the Internet Archive and other websites. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong responded to it at length on Twitter. 

Coinbase chief operating officer Emilie Choi, chief product officer Surojit Chatterjee and chief people officer LJ Brock were the targets of the call for removal for “executing plans and ideas that have led to questionable results and negative values.” The author listed eight of their failings in detail. They included the unsuccessful Coinbase NFT platform, rescinding job offers to new employees, mismanagement, creating a toxic workplace and apathy. The petition concluded:

“We hope to find people who have had experience in the crypto space and can run such a company more responsibly.”

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter on Friday morning with a series of 16 tweets. Among other things, he tells the petitioners that, “Our culture is to praise in public, and criticize in private.” Armstrong also said he was surprised that he was not on the petitioners’ list of executives to dismiss and suggested that the unhappy employees are the ones who should leave their jobs.

Related: Coinbase offers ‘thousands of tokens’ in expanded swap service

Coinbase shares took a beating on the market in May, along with the entire crypto industry that was hit with instability, leading to concern among shareholders and customers. It was also the subject of insider trading rumors recently.

Mastercard to allow 2.9B cardholders to make direct NFT purchases

Card payments for NFTs were first announced in association with Coinbase’s latest NFT marketplace in January.

International payment processing giant Mastercard is expanding its payment network for nonfungible token (NFT) markets and Web3.

The financial service provider announced that it has been working on expanding their payment networks to NFTs over the past year. The firm has partnered with a number of leading NFT marketplaces to allow 2.9 billion cardholders to directly make NFT purchases without buying crypto first.

Currently, users need to buy crypto to bid on and buy NFTs. However, with the latest Mastercard partnership, billions of cardholders can now bypass the process of buying a transferring crypto to NFT marketplaces. The firm said:

“These integrations are designed to make crypto more accessible and help the NFT ecosystem keep growing, innovating and bringing in more fans.”

Mastercard stated that it has partnered with multiple NFT marketplaces namely Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox (SAND), Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.

Related: Mastercard expands consulting with crypto-dedicated practices with 500 new hires

The NFT card-purchase service was first launched in January this year in a partnership with Coinbase, allowing users to usbuy NFTs directly by using credit cards.

The decision to expand its payment network to the rapidly growing NFT ecosystem was also based on the company’s latest survey of 35,000 respondents from 40 countries, which showed that 45% of the consumers have either bought an NFT or are considering doing so. Fifty percent of the surveyed consumers also showed interest in getting more flexible options to make purchases.

The firm claimed they are also working on offering world-class security to customers with its latest payment option, similar to “when making transactions in a store or online with a Mastercard card.”

The payment processing giant has shown keen interest in the crypto and NFT markets over the past couple of years. Earlier in April this year, Mastercard filed for 15 metaverse and NFT-related trademarks.

The top two mainstream payment processing companies, Visa and Mastercard, have come a long way from their early days of blocking crypto transactions on their network, and are currently competing to become leading financial services providers in the decentralized space. Visa launched an immersion program back in March to allow creators to build their business with NFTs

Major crypto firms reportedly cut up to 10% of staff amid bear market

Previous crypto bear markets triggered much bigger layoffs, with some firms like ConsenSys reportedly firing up to 60% of its workforce in 2018.

Gemini, a cryptocurrency trading platform founded by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is the latest industry firm to lay off a significant part of its staff due to unfavorable market conditions.

Winklevoss’ crypto business Gemini Trust reportedly cut 10% of its employees amid the ongoing bear crypto market, the founders wrote in a notice to employees on June 2, as Bloomberg reported.

As part of its first major headcount cut, Gemini will refocus on products that are “critical” to the firm’s mission, the brothers said, adding that “turbulent market conditions” are “likely to persist for some time.” The notice reportedly reads:

“This is where we are now, in the contraction phase that is settling into a period of stasis — what our industry refers to as “crypto winter. […] This has all been further compounded by the current macroeconomic and geopolitical turmoil. We are not alone.”

The new report comes after a number of major industry companies fired some employees or put new hires on hold. In mid-May, the Coinbase exchange officially announced that it would slow down hiring and reassess its headcount in order to ensure it continues operating as planned.

Previously, the major crypto-friendly trading platform Robinhood fired 9% of its workforce. The layoffs came amid Robinhood’s HOOD stock touching all-time lows as part of a longer-term bear market on crypto markets.

The latest crypto industry layoffs are by no means new to the industry as major crypto markets like Bitcoin (BTC) have been historically moving in cycles, with major bear markets preceding bigger gains. Amid a massive bear market of crypto in 2018, some industry firms like ConsenSys reportedly fired up to 60% of their workforce, announcing plans to hire 600 employees afterward.

Related: Crypto job market holding up despite tech industry cutbacks

According to some sources, the current conditions of the crypto job market do not look too gloomy though. A spokesperson for the FTX crypto exchange told Cointelegraph that the firm has not cut and does not plan to lay off any of its current 175 employees at the global exchange or 75 employees at the FTX US.

According to the crypto hiring website by the Bitcoin influencer Anthony Pompliano, executives in the crypto and blockchain industry are still looking to hire people, with the PompCryptoJobs website listing about 600 open positions at the time of writing. The major global crypto exchange Binance is looking to hire nearly 1,000 employees, according to its official job openings website.

Gemini did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Kraken CEO defends listing LUNA 2.0: ‘Bitcoin traders don’t pay the bills’

Kraken’s Jesse Powell came under fire for listing the second-generation LUNA; separately, he railed against TradeFi’s crypto exchange claims.

The crypto winter has emotions running high. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell came under fire for his defense of listing the new LUNA, also known as LUNA 2.0, which seeks to bring the original LUNA — now known as Luna Classic (LUNC) — and TerraUSD — now known as TerraUSD Classic (USTC) — back from the dead.

Respected names in the crypto industry such as Nic Carter of Castle Ventures spoke out against the decision, while in a separate tweet thread, Powell lashed out at short-seller Jim Chanos, who had built a large short against Coinbase, Kraken’s biggest competitor.

Carter simply tweeted “why” to the official Kraken Twitter account that announced the listing of the new LUNA.

The world’s fourth-largest crypto exchange, Kraken lists over 160 cryptocurrencies. The list grows every month, from Bitcoin (BTC) to Filecoin (FIL) to the second iteration of LUNA, which currently sits 164th on its price index.

The first Terra collapse wiped out circa $50 billion, causing suicide hotlines to be pinned to the Terra subreddit, while legal documents reveal Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon liquidated two branches and an entire company days before the crash.

Related: Exchanges back ‘Terra 2.0 revival plan’ via airdrops, listing, buyback and burning

The project was then hard-forked and relaunched with little to no recompense for impoverished investors. An airdrop, for example, did not go how the developers intended, as tokens were unevenly distributed. The new LUNA has since slid from highs of almost $20 to less than $8, despite a 90% spike in price driven by a Binance airdrop.

Price chart for LUNA showing the Binance pump on May 30. Source: CoinMarketCap

Powell cites that “client demand” motivated the listing of LUNA. Rohan Grey, an assistant professor of law at Willamette University, called Powell out on the move, arguing that eBay does not allow fraudsters to remain on the e-commerce platform, so why should crypto exchanges allow Terra a seat at the table? The comment was a quip to Powell’s claim about Kraken:

“We’re a marketplace, like eBay. BTCBTC traders don’t pay the bills.”

Powell has previously shown a decisive side to his operations, recently closing Kraken’s global headquarters because “San Francisco is not safe.” However, when it comes to money and Kraken, “We try to be as asset-agnostic as possible,” he tweeted.

“Fiat and most stocks are garbage but where’s the outrage? Revenue from these other coins pays for all the security, pro-BTC lobbying and marketing.”

In a separate Twitter thread, Kraken defended the future of crypto exchanges. In a Crypto Critics Corner podcast, Chanos — an American investment manager — detailed the short he had built up against Coinbase, America’s largest crypto exchange. For Powell, there will be a “paradigm shift over the next 10 years,” and crypto exchanges will come out as winners. 

Infighting and Twitter spats aside, for those seeking signal among the war of words, Powell shared his investment preferences for picking Bitcoin, investing in exchanges, or both:

Kraken did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.