Coinbase’s Deep Freeze; Microsoft Subtweets Big Tech

What a difference a few months makes. In February, as storm clouds were beginning to form over the economy, Coinbase announced a plan to hire 6,000 new employees, which would have more than doubled its head count. That ambitious plan came to a screeching halt on Thursday, when the cryptocurrency exchange announced it would freeze hiring “for the foreseeable future.” Even more extraordinary, Coinbase said it will rescind some job offers it recently made to people who haven’t started yet. And, Coinbase said, it will share the bad news with those people by…email. Ouch. 

The news shouldn’t be a total shock. Coinbase began backing away from its hiring goals in May, when it announced a two-week hiring pause. Even with its retrenchment, it has hired 1,200 employees this year. Still, Coinbase’s U-turn adds to the gloom in the crypto sector, which has seen a 43% drop in the collective market value of cryptocurrencies since the beginning of the year. In April, Robinhood, which relies heavily on crypto trading volumes, said it would cut 9% of its workforce.