Bitcoin Forum

Cryptocurrency related business are clearly having financial problems now. Although there is some spike in trading volume when there is a high volatility,  the bear market is much worse for exchanges than a bull market.

This is the time to withdrawal all the funds you have on exchanges. They might have financial problems.

So long as they don't fire the 1 person working for customer support.

Makes me wonder how many of these were / are and I don't have an exact way to put this. "Needed layoffs but we didn't have a reason" other then we don't have something for you to do today.
Many companies shrink staff when projects are finished or when growth slows. Tech companies, don't always do this but look for 'a reason' to shrink staffing.

It would be a lot tougher to go to staff last year when BTC & crypto were booming and tell them you are laying people off because they are not needed.
Now with everything plummeting in price and all the losses, it's easier to show people the door.

-Dave

NOW you're telling me... I just shoveled more worthless fiat to Coinbase to buy the dip LOL

Well this is necessary if they really want to survive on this bear season. They have most of there assets in crypto while the profit from fees is on crypto too which is now plummeting non-stop. There are some reports on twitter that Bitcoin withdawal on coinbase has a delay a certain days while withdrawing to bank will take much more longer(can't get anymore the source).

Working on this huge giant company is indeed very scary if you are a regular employee that just want to have a happy job on crypto.

A layoff - particularly in an "at-will" technology job - is not something to fear, it's something to expect and be ready for.

On the bright side, there's a new paragraph in the resume for the next job.

Just buy btc and withdrawal it as fast as possible.

As coinbase announced few  time ago, they can take our funds if they are insolvent.

 https://blog.coinbase.com/setting-the-record-straight-your-funds-are-safe-at-coinbase-and-always-will-be-f8cf2b588fd8

I am afraid of usdc as well, I have some..

Crypto winter is coming for sure, and it's never a good idea to hold any coins on centralized exchanges, or in fake dex and in yield earning platforms semi-scams.
I saw this news about Coinbase workers, I also think that Crypto.com also announced something similar, and one Bisq fork dex announced they are stopping development because market crashed :D
This is more or less expected, and it is not only related with Bitcoin crash, whole economy is like Titanic ship that is currently crashing, and I think this looks like it was intentional plan :/

Crypto.com says it will lay off 260 employees, joining the downsizing wave hitting crypto exchanges
https://www.businessinsider.com/cryptocom-layoffs-260-workers-5-percent-employees-announcement-2022-6

People really didn't expect it will go down til 20k. But after the war broke and sanctions started to put on russia from everywhere, this began, not just crypto but the almost all market are affected.

While in the other hand, it's an opportunity to bought more in this dip.

What has been happening on the crypto market is a reflection of the financial market in general - the market is in a bear / down trend. Do take in consideration that some events in the crypto world are just pure extreme examples, such as the LUNA event, but indeed these are not easy times for the companies.

Big VC companies, such as Sequoia Capital and YCombinator, already warned[1][2] that they'll reduce the investment frenzy that has been seen in the past years, mostly due to the lackluster behavior of many tech companies in the past months (such as Netflix f.e). Since the business model of these kind of tech companies mostly relies on burning cash fast in order to expand (and then later deal with the pain of growing too quickly), they are now facing a problem where funding is uncertain which makes them having reduce costs in the short therm by mostly cutting jobs (see for example Glovo[3], Klarna[4] or even Netflix[5] (more complete list can be seen here[6])).

If this happens in the tech market, for sure considering the whole crypto market status and especially the way that Crypto.com evolved to the brand that is today (by a mix of really strong advertising (burning huge amounts of money) + their credit card cashback program (now slashed)), this kind of approach is expected. Let's just hope that remaining companies (tech and crypto) are able to sustain current market conditions ...

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[1]https://news.crunchbase.com/business/sequoia-warning-founders/ (https://news.crunchbase.com/business/sequoia-warning-founders/)
[2]https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/y-combinator-startup-warning-letter-downturn-2022/ (https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/y-combinator-startup-warning-letter-downturn-2022/)
[3]https://sifted.eu/articles/glovo-foodpanda-layoffs/ (https://sifted.eu/articles/glovo-foodpanda-layoffs/)
[4]https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/23/klarna-lays-off-10-of-its-workforce/ (https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/23/klarna-lays-off-10-of-its-workforce/)
[5]https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61489041 (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61489041)
[6]https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs-2022/ (https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs-2022/)

Dismissals are a common thing in almost every companies of the industry during this weak market due to the volume of money and number of customers decreasing. It's not needed and profitable to keep the same number of employees to attend a reduced number of customers. In my country the same is happening and it's understandable businessmen act like this. Next bull run cycle these businesses start hiring again.

This is now a bothering pattern among crypto-related companies. Surely, the bear market did not force them to deactivate certain features or pull out certain services from their platforms. But with the laying off of a significant number of workers, it could mean a poorer service.

I'm also thinking of Coinbase's loan from Goldman Sachs. Their Bitcoin collateral must have already fallen from its value and additional collateral must have already been demanded from the exchange.

Laying people off when business isn't doing well is entirely expected as suchmoon has said. However, the circumstances surrounding these lay offs is pretty disgusting, even for Coinbase's already abysmal standards. I'm reading about people who were fired via a text message, people who discovered they were fired when they were simply kicked out of their remote systems while in the middle of working on something, even someone who took out a work visa and had his job offered rescinded, meaning he is being kicked out the country. We know Coinbase have a complete disregard for their customers, but looks like they have a complete disregard for their staff as well.

How do they get poorer than the complete disregard for their users they already show? :P

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Coinbase share price tanking and laying off 20% of its workforce. This is the same company whose recent fillings with the SEC called all their customers their "unsecured creditors". Worth bearing that in mind if you still have any funds in their wallets, for some reason.

And then it becomes much harder for them to hire a similar quantity of workforce (think the 18% that Coinbase just fired), because it costs even more money to train them to the standards of the previous workforce.

Then again, this is CoinBase's problem making their finances dependent on the market trends of BTC. Companies (I'm not including trusts here) should never store their operating assets in volatile currencies.

I think that this step is expected and taken by many major companies in anticipation of any economic recession and to avoid problems that will occur in the share price if you decide to reduce the number of employees in the recession wave.

It may also be aimed at making some profit in the stock market, as investors prefer companies that reduce the number of employees, but the move is just a tactic and nothing more and does not indicate a real financial problem.

Does anyone know the number of employees?

Armstrong seems to think they'll just hire the same people back again:

I'm sure the people you just treated like dirt will be rushing to come back and work for you again. ::)

1,100.

Do you think that exchanges may have financial difficulties and because of this they can take away all deposits? Of course, it is extremely reckless to store your crypto in exchanges, but I don’t think that now they can start massively taking cryptocurrency from their users. For this, exchanges can come up with any reason, fortunately, the user agreement allows them to do this easily and without current problems. Also, exchanges should have reserves, therefore, it seems to me, the reduction of employees is not a reason for a new panic, and now there is a reduction in the costs of the exchanges business.

Tbh, I really wouldn't overthink them being insolvent and all those kinds of things. It's highly likely that they're expecting lower demand in the future, and they're just taking into consideration the deeper economic risks. It's not like only Coinbase is laying off employees, a lot of tech businesses are as well.

I expected it to go this low and it's possible it will go even lower if we look the bigger picture, market conditions and charts.

All Bitcoin and shitcoin market is such a small percentage from total economic collapse, that it is insignificant in bigger pitcure.
Someone posted that county of El Salvadar lost most money from their Bitcoin investments, but this is just a tiny percent of their total investments.
I have no idea how Microstartegy and Michael Saylor feel now, but I know they are cosnidering Bitcoin to be long term investment.

Now it just makes me think even worse about Coinbase and all other centralized exchanges.
We can expect that next in the line will be Binance exchange, and every other platform that earns interest on Bitcoin and other coins.
It's time to withdraw your coins to your own non-custodial wallet asap.

A bit expected for companies on laying off some workers and this isnt something surprising actually yet they would really be needing on doing such step for them to lessen out expense considering that the market is a on the hellish side and its true that this isnt only happening on crypto space but also in other traditional markets as well which we shouldnt really isolate this issue on this market alone.

I dont know about other issues like this one is intentional or something have some underground intents or something but once companies do made out some
lay-offs then it would be particularly meaning about their finance situation.

In fairness to Coinbase, the overall economy is having a hard time. It's not just Coinbase that is forced to lay off some of its workers. So I guess what the company is going through right now isn't solely due its mismanagement. External factors must also be involved. For one, within the crypto sector the likes of Crypto.com, Gemini, and Blockfi are also doing the same laying off of workers. But this isn't even just about the crypto winter.

https://i.imgur.com/wUOhyoC.jpg
https://twitter.com/Bitcoin/status/1536725501045243912/photo/1

I think most of the layoff had nothing to do with the main business of Coinbase, as an exchange and a custodian for others. This paragraph:


makes me think that once they saw millions coming in from each direction, basically everything you sod was making money they've just gone on a hiring spree trying to get a piece of the pie from every possible trend since those turn into fads pretty quick suddenly they realized not everything brings money forever.


There is no way for them to become insolvent, but it's about time they stick to what they were doing best and profitable even during previous bearish seasons, being a crypto exchange, stop with the Defi and NFT garbage that have turned into money pits for almost everyone.

Maybe the recent bear market contributes the collapsed of their generated profits that's why they decide to end up the career of some people working with them. We can't blame them to have this decision and maybe they are been really hurt financially by the current events then they cannot able to pay all of them that's why this is part of their cost cutting to minimize the bleed on their own company fundings.

But I hope this will not affect their service because if this make their service especially when we talk costumer service then this might give huge problem to them.

The employees layoffs during these times is normal but don't think so Coinbase needs this decision at this time as they are expanding their business to different nations and need employees backpack to support them but we all know they are mainly concerned with their profits only and this decision came across by CEO but they will never take a cut in their wages and taking big portion of it :

https://i.ibb.co/mbdN6jD/coinbase-salary-ceo-1024x262.jpg (https://ibb.co/17Bz8gv)

See how much they are earning through coinbase and involving in all other privacy related breaches and freezing the funds of users.But they see the future economic conditions as concerning and needs to implement this decision.They are making billion dollar revenue each quarter and you can check out the  shareholders report  (https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/Coinbase-Q421-Shareholder-Letter.pdf)

But they are implementing this decision at this time when market is down and they wants to save themselves with recent SEC filings which was important as they declared users funds can be used in case of insolvency so what else can we expect from them that they will not protect anyone's interest.

We understand that the market bear is telling much on exchanges. It is difficult for them to bear. But I personally do not think that laying off staff is the best approach. The economy is bad and one losing job is very critical. How about if a company try talking to staff to take pay cut instead of total dismissal.
If the market returns in the bull direction, they can reverse to initial salary arrangement.

Exchanges are suffering the more because many traders have temporarily stopped and some people are selling their coins off exchanges. But everything will bounce well back.

The beginning of new era, everything is getting automated so companies don't really want to pay for the workers instead of this they want one time investment and get returns forever. I don't really think the bear market affected the exchanges as much as the holders because the trading volume is still there probably they get less money than its peak but on an average I don't think there is much difference in their revenue.

Coinbase is starting to have a lot of problems because it wasn't just an exchange, they were exposed to bitcoin so when the price went down they started losing money. Otherwise what you said in the last part is wrong because during the big drops (just like the big rises) there is a lot more trades taking place increasing the total daily trading volume on exchanges hence increasing their revenue by a lot.
For example if you look at the daily charts, the 2x 4-day drops that we have show a volume that is about 16 times higher than last month when price was stable close to $40k. So technically the exchange revenue went up 16 times during these times.

It was come from when everyone was layoff from the normal business cause of covid and lockdown. Huge surge in big tech's stock and crypto as well since people use their saving money or money from govt's aid to invest. Those companies booming, starting upscale and hiring everyone leading to this after effect. Now, covid was out of the picture and every traditional business is back to normal, they can't have all the pie for themself anymore.

I mean, you can absolutely blame them. They massively over expanded to try to get their fingers in to as many pies as possible, assuming that the bitcoin price would only ever continue to go up, which literally anybody who has been here for more than a few months knows is never going to happen. Look at the charts for the past 10 years and it was obvious that at some point the price was going to fall again, and a company as large as Coinbase should have been prepared for that instead of being caught off guard and having to cut a fifth of their workforce with no warning. But Coinbase's leadership aren't exactly renowned for giving a shit about anybody but themselves, so hey, let the workers pay the price for their incompetent management.

Their base salary is a tiny amount of the money that they take from Coinbase. Armstrong just paid $133 million in cash for a house.

I already did on some of the exchanges except Binance I still believe in Binance's capability in times of trouble, in fact, they are hiring 2000 more employees amidst this market decline, CZ is really the frontline of the exchange industry no wonder they are miles ahead of the competition.

Binance Is Looking to Hire 2,000 Employees Amid the Latest Market Decline (https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/cryptocurrency/articles/binance-is-looking-to-hire-2000-employees-amid-the-latest-market-decline/)

Just like the typical company and business if they're having some financial problems with their operation due to the downturn of the market, they have to cut off their expenses and costs including their workers. And it's always not recommended to leave your funds to any exchange despite how strong people trust them. But laying off at these times, I think Coinbase should have done better and instead of laying them off, there should be an alternative solution to this just like what Dan Price did.

I would say that these are the people who will be the first to get fired, because they have the lowest value and priorities for the company, considering that this is something that clients complain about the most. In times of financial crisis, it is easiest to replace people with automated systems that are already widely used in most customer support.

I used to be able to call my ISP and talk to a real person, now it takes at least 5-10 minutes to go through the whole process where the computer decides if it can offer me a solution before I get the opportunity to talk to a real person and then I get a message that I am 8 in the queue. All big companies protect profits without any hesitation to lay off 10% or 20% of people who are just numbers for them.