Co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong reported on Tuesday that nearly a thousand jobs will be lost at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The cuts came as a result of deteriorating conditions in the cryptocurrency sector.
Cutting 950 jobs is part of a larger austerity plan: The US company wants to cut its costs by 25 percent. It’s Coinbase’s second round of layoffs in a short time. In June last year, the crypto platform also announced a round of layoffs.
Coinbase isn’t the first in the industry to cut spending. Crypto exchange Kraken recently reported that it was already cutting 20 percent of its functionality. According to the news service Reuters At Genesis, which acts as a lender to crypto companies, about 30 percent of jobs are disappearing. This will be the second round of cuts in no time.
Many companies in the crypto market have not had it easy lately. Prices of the larger Bitcoin and many other digital currencies have plummeted in the past year, in part due to higher interest rates.
Added to this was the bankruptcy last November of FTX, which was the second largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time. As a result, many investors lost their investments and cryptocurrency prices fell further.