4 months after infamous Super Bowl ad, Coinbase lays off 1,100 staff

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Cryptocurrencies are having a shocking time right now. The price of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and others have all dropped to the lowest they've been in at least the last two years, and the general outlook is grim, too. There are real repercussions coming from this digital turbulence, and you need look no further than Coinbase for proof.

1/ Today I shared that I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team at Coinbase by about 18%. The broader market downturn means that we need to be more mindful of costs as we head into a potential recession.June 14, 2022

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong has taken to Twitter (via The Verge) to announce the company was going to "reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during the economic downturn." That 18% equates to around 1,100 staff.

Armstrong goes on to say that this was partially down to expanding so quickly over the last two years and that it wasn't operating as efficiently due to the new size. That's a harsh reality for the affected staff, who apparently found out via email as the company "made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees."

In a blog that he links to from his tweet, Armstrong suggests that we are entering a recession and that another cryptocurrency winter was imminent. Having weathered crypto winters before, where trading revenues are down significantly, he sees these layoffs as the best way of preparing for what lies ahead. The layoffs come just a week or so after Coinbase made news for rescinding job offers it had made to numerous applicants, as the cryptocurrency market began its descent.

From a gaming perspective, cryptocurrencies have been a major pain in the butt, responsible for driving up graphics card prices and making it almost impossible to actually buy the likes of the RTX 3080. So while the drop in prices could potentially free up cards, news of people losing their jobs is never welcome.

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Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.