Though Coinbase announced it raised $300 million “from high-quality investors” last week, the cryptocurrency exchange also laid off an estimated 15 people working remotely in support, compliance, and fraud departments, Yahoo Finance reports.
Coinbase would not confirm how many employees were cut, it did admit the layoffs had taken place, and told Yahoo in a statement:
“We’ve learned that certain teams who are co-located are more efficient, effective, and happier in their roles. So moving forward, some teams—including Support, Fraud, and Compliance—will only hire employees into Coinbase offices.”
The statement seems to accord with Yahoo reporting claiming that Tina Bhatnager, a former executive at Salesforce and Twitter newly-hired at Coinbase to run customer service, “wants the customer service staff centralized in Coinbase’s offices. As a result, the remote support team members were let go, though some were offered the chance to relocate to a Coinbase office.”
A source from Coinbase told Yahoo, “People here are pretty upset about (the layoffs), and so far senior leadership is handling communications poorly.”
Coinbase reportedly has around 550 total employees, and in the run-up to announcing its latest successful funding round, claimed the company was valued at $8 billion.
Coinbase also denied rumours last week that it will IPO any time soon.
But despite overall and anticipated growth at Coinbase, changes to market features appear to have led to restructuring at the company.
During last year’s crypto bull run, Coinbase said it was signing up 50 000 users per day, Hiring sprees followed at many exchanges.
But since January, crypto markets have been declining and returns have been profoundly in the red for months.
According to Yahoo, last week, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at 62% below last year’s high of $20 000 US. At the same time, Ethereum (ETH) was down 79% and Litecoin was down 80%. Many smaller coins were faring far worse.
In the face of equally precipitous decreases in retail trade volumes at Coinbase, which admitted last week that its revenues are primarily fee-based, Coinbase has repeatedly stated that it is focussing on building services, including secure crypto custody services, to accommodate what it says is a surge in institutional interest in crypto investing.
Meanwhile, some employees, too, will evidently have to “pivot.”