Hiring at crypto exchange Coinbase up 33% despite recent layoffs

NEW DELHI: Despite laying off 1100 employees, leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, its full-time employee count stood at 4,977 at the end of the June quarter (Q2) -- a 33 per cent rise from the 3,730 workers it had at the end of Q4 2021, a report showed on Monday.

According to data provided by niche news publisher BanklessTimes.com, this is in stark contrast to the 18 per cent reduction in workforce that Coinbase announced in June.

"Coinbase is currently advertising several full-time vacancies across a range of functions, including engineering, customer support, and marketing," said BanklessTime's Jonathan Merry.

While it's true that the firm has made some redundancies, "it's important to remember that it's still growing. So while it may be trimming its workforce in some areas, the data suggests that it's still expanding overall," Merry added.

While Coinbase is one of the most valuable companies in crypto, it still has a long way to go to catch up to Google. The search giant employs more than 100,000 people and has a market cap of more than $1.4 trillion.

"The current market conditions are tough for everyone in crypto. However, it's important to remember that the industry is still young and growing. While some companies are struggling, others are still hiring and expanding," said the report.

Coinbase also faces stiff competition from other exchanges like FTX and Binance, which have been aggressively hiring in recent months.

FTX, for example, has more than doubled its workforce over the past year.

Binance, which is headquartered in Malta, has also been on a hiring spree. The company now employs more than 3,000 people, up from just 1,000 in 2019.

Coinbase reported a massive loss in both revenue and profit in the June quarter -- logging $1.1 billion in net loss as revenue declined from $2.033 billion to $803 million from a year-ago quarter which is a sharp drop of nearly 60 per cent.

In quarterly terms, net revenue of Coinbase was down 31 per cent compared to Q1, driven by lower trading volume.