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Coinbase to slash 20% of workforce in second major round of job cuts



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Coinbase is cutting about a fifth of its workforce as it looks to preserve cash during the crypto market downturn.The exchange plans to cut 950 jobs, according to a blog post published Tuesday morning. Coinbase, which had roughly 4,700 employees as of the end of September, already slashed 18% of its workforce in June citing a need to manage costs and growing “too quickly” during the bull market.”With perfect hindsight, looking back, we should have done more,” CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC in a phone interview. “The best you can do is react quickly once information becomes available, and that’s what we’re doing in this case.”Coinbase said the move would result in new expenses of between $149 million and $163 million for the first quarter. The layoffs, along with other restructuring measures, will bring Coinbase’s operating expenses down by 25% for the quarter ending in March, according to a new regulatory filing. The crypto company also said it expects adjusted EBITDA losses for the full year to be within a prior $500 million “guardrail” set last year.After looking at various stress tests for Coinbase’s annual revenue, Armstrong said, “it became clear that we would need to reduce expenses to increase our chances of doing well in every scenario” and there was “no way” to do so without reducing head count. The company will also be shutting down several projects with a “lower probability of success.”Cryptocurrency markets have been rocked in recent months following the collapse of one of the industry’s biggest players, FTX. Armstrong pointed to that fallout, and increasing pressure on the sector thanks to “unscrupulous actors in the industry” referring to FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. “The FTX collapse and the resultin …

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