Coinbase Downsizes More Than a Dozen People: Report

According to Yahoo! Finance, Coinbase has eliminated more than 15 people from its customer support, compliance, and fraud departments.

All three of these departments would seem to be of the utmost importance to the company, often simultaneously lauded and maligned for its commitment to regulatory compliance. Daniel Roberts, author of the Yahoo! report, acquired confirmation that there had been firings but could not get an exact count from Coinbase. The number comes from an anonymous source, so could be more or less, but one thing is for certain: Coinbase definitely downsized more than a handful of people.

Move Comes At A Time of Expansion
Coinbase made no mention of the downsizing on its blog, and according to Roberts’ source, higher-ups at the firm are “handling communications poorly.” From our perspective, this news is somewhat odd, given that the company has recently appeared in good health and just this past week expanded its offerings for its institutional clients. Of course, financial health is not the only reason for positions to be eliminated.

The report notes that most of the employees were remote workers. As it turns out, Coinbase would prefer to bring customer service and the other departments, as a whole, closer to home. Coinbase told Yahoo!:

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.

Trading Down When The Market Is Down
Cryptocurrencies have been on a downward slope for most of 2018, from the highs at the end of 2017 and the beginning of the year. Smart cryptocurrency people tend to “hodl” when prices are low, and so trading volume at Coinbase and across the market has seen a concurrent decline with perceived value of cryptos.

According to the report, Coinbase layoffs have been expected by people at the company for some time now. It therefore makes good sense that remote employees in departments the company would prefer to have tighter control over would be the first to go.

Some experts predict an upswing in the value of Bitcoin impending. If this comes to pass, most other cryptocurrencies will inherently trade at higher prices, even if their Bitcoin value is steady or only slightly inclined.