From The Verge: Just four months ago, Coinbase reportedly spent $14 million on a Super Bowl ad that consisted almost entirely of a colorful QR code bouncing around the screen, pointing viewers to a website where they could get $15 in Bitcoin just by signing up. Now, its fortunes have turned so sharply that it will lay off about 1,100 employees, or 18 percent of its workforce, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a post on the company blog, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong first blamed changing economic conditions that may lead to a “crypto winter” and waited until his third bullet point to mention that the company has “over-hired,” citing its attempt to take advantage of “new use cases enabled by crypto getting traction practically every week.”
Four days ago, Armstrong responded on Twitter to an employee petition calling for the removal of Coinbase execs, calling it “really dumb on multiple levels” and encouraging employees unhappy with the situation or proposed solutions to quit.
The employee petition cited issues that don’t seem nearly as dumb as Armstrong claimed, calling out the company for “aggressively hiring for thousands of roles, despite the fact that it is an unsustainable plan and is contrary to the wisdom of the crypto industry.” It didn’t mention the Super Bowl promotion, but it did note the over-prioritization of certain projects. That starts with the Coinbase NFT platform that launched with what appears to be exceptionally bad timing considering a drop in activity in the overall marketplace and which has failed to catch on among people who trade in the digital tokens.
View: Full Article
