Michael Bellusci
Michael Bellusci is CoinDesk's crypto payments reporter.
U.S. cryptocurrency exchange COINBASE Global (COIN) is pausing new hiring for two weeks and slashing cloud spending on Amazon Web Services, along with other cost-cutting measures following its recent weaker-than-expected earnings report and the overall crypto market rout, The Information reported, citing Coinbase internal emails sent to employees.
Coinbase also told employees it will give them more stock grants to offset half the difference between ones made earlier this year and Coinbase’s closing share price last Friday, according to The Information’s report.
One of the emails discussed plans to reduce spending on cloud services such as Amazon Web Services and Datadog, and also cutting gas fees on internal wallet transfers, according to the Information.
On Thursday afternoon ET, Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee shared a tweet thread describing what was mentioned in one of the emails cited by The Information.
On Tuesday I sent out a memo announcing that we will be increasing our focus on critical revenue-generating products. Here are some more details ??
— surchatt.eth (@surojit) May 19, 2022
The report follows Coinbase’s blog earlier this week in which Chief Operating Officer Emilie Choi said the company is “slowing hiring so we can reprioritize our hiring needs against our highest-priority business goals.” The move is a departure from Coinbase’s plan to triple its headcount earlier this year, as reported.
In its first-quarter earnings report, Coinbase reported lower-than-expected revenues, and a quarterly net loss of $430 million, compared with a profit of $840 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. The company said it expected about $1.7 billion of stock-based compensation expenses, up from $1.5 billion previously, citing “hiring trends and year-to-date acquisitions.”
Coinbase ended Q1 with 4,948 full-time employees, up 33% versus the fourth quarter of 2021. Over the past twelve months, Coinbase also said in its first-quarter report that the company added over 3,200 net new employees.
Shares of Coinbase have fallen over 70% this year.
Coinbase declined to comment regarding The Information's report.
Read more: Coinbase Expands Features, Allowing Some App Users to Access Ethereum-Based Dapps
