Coinbase lays off 18% of workforce; firm entering recession, says CEO

Leading crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that it is laying off 18 per cent of its workforce, or about 1,100 jobs amid the economic downturn.

Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder said that while the company tried its best to get this just right, in this case, it is now clear that it is over-hired.

"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 said.

"In past crypto winters, trading revenue (our largest revenue source) has declined significantly. While it is hard to predict the economy or the markets, we always plan for the worst so we can operate the business through any environment," he added.

The company said that at the beginning of 2021, it had 1,250 employees.

"At the time, we were in the early innings of the bull run and adoption of crypto products was exploding. There were new use cases enabled by crypto getting traction practically every week," Armstrong said.

"We saw the opportunities but we needed to massively scale our team to be positioned to compete in a broad array of bets. It's challenging to grow at just the right pace given the scale of our growth," he added.