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Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

blog.coinbase.com

561–570 of 616 posts

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#561
post #97
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course: governments around the world flooded markets with stimulus cash and it all had to go somewhere. Now they are unwinding stimulus and it’s going away. Every reasonable observer has just been waiting for this to happen.

I thought crypto would collapse every year for the last 14 years, and I've been proven wrong every time. So I'm wondering why this time I'm right.

Because this time the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates and reducing the money supply, which has never happened before since Bitcoin was invented. Low interest rates/quantitative easing/increased money supply (all same thing) is what fuels asset bubbles, including crypto. Take it away and the asset bubble deflates.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#562

It's shocking to me that people keep fucking up these money printing machines (read: crypto exchanges). Your incessant need for growth and share holder value completely rots your brain and you take a golden goose and burden it with so much overhead that it becomes unsustainable. Why?! Just sit back and collect exchange fees, become rich beyond your imagination (see FTX).

The "money printing machine" relies 100% on inducing new suckers to participate. If you sit still (i.e., don't spend $$ on customer acquisition) the whole system dies.

Yeah, you can have a marketing budget. No one said you couldn't. But the kind of growth Coinbase was going for was far beyond the scope of just "customer acquisition".

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#563
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty standard to not let terminated employees hang around. It feels cold but it’s just the way it has to be. Sone places will even do this when an employee submits a resignation on good terms. Just a way for the company to cover themselves.

This is absolutely untrue. In Europe we work several days/weeks after the layoff notice. You can fire people from the night to the morning only in US

I have never worked outside of Europe and I have seen it happen multiple times. More often than not.

The fired person is just sent on paid time off.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#565
post #460

Still, he doesn't mention the ultimate reason for all this, which is that crypto is not sustainable and is a glorified vaporware that pretentiously tried to convince the world that it was a solution while, in reality, became simply a different problem. I don't think we are now in a better position than before crypto. I honestly think that we wouldn't miss it if it was gone. Sorry, I had to finally vomit my frustratio…

Is that really relevant to Coinbase's business though? They're a fee collector - they can do great as long as they're collecting more in fees than it costs them to run the business, and that's true regardless of the net societal value of cryptocurrencies.

The whole industry around it is just making it worse.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sensitive information should always be segregated and subject to tight controls, which is easy to sever This, very few people should have access to production data. This is a shocking revelation. I’m reevaluating being a customer of theirs.

In this episode of Coinbase they learn that authentication and authorization are two different things :D I was similarly shocked that the only control plane they had to limit access to sensitive information was literally terminating everything. They don't have any kind of access control that would allow them to keep an employee in their system but limit their access. How exactly are they running a "finance company" i…

Email is often "production data" -- it contains personal data, IP, business relationship information and so on. Sending an email from an @coinbase.com is certainly a production action.

It is only fairly recently that locking people out of the office didn't implicitly remove their access to email, memos, letters and so on.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#567
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Friendly, smiley, fake. My father had to lay off a bunch of people in 2008. I am now a manager. He told me that if I am ever forced to do this to not ever do this crap to my team. Tell them that this is bullshit. Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. Anything better than fake smiles…

Company I worked at had a layoff in 2012, security manager escorted 200 people out of the building. At the end of the day, he was escorted out of the building. It was quite shitty for that fellow, I felt terrible for him.

This has strong IT Crowd vibes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGFGD5pj03M

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#568
post #529
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and the shareholders literally determine his salary. Why do you care what these people pay each other?

That's like saying that US citizens vote for the Federal swamp. 99% of them are totally against the swamp, yet the swamp continues. Voting doesn't matter if there's no real ability to vote for real change.

If there is any truth in this world it is that shareholders absolutely call the shots. Anyone with any experience in finance can produce tens of thousands of examples of this - from shareholder lawsuits, to activist investors, to hostile takeovers, to board shakeups... The list goes on and on and on and on...

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#569
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea that Binance is so far ahead. Why do most people use it? Some trust factor?

It has the most pairs available, historically aggressive referral scheme, BNB and BSC also helped a lot. not sure about the trust factor

It also has very low trading fees (~0.1% per trade)

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#570
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His accountability comes in the form of the drop in price of the shares of the company. That is the ultimate accountability for any CEO or other shareholder.

His net worth was about $2.4 billion. Coinbase is currently down ~3.5% on the day. So his net worth is now about £2.3 billion†. I don't see that inconveniencing him much. † Or maybe a bit more if he was foolish enough to hold some of it in crypto.

He's lost literally billions during this correction. Losing over 50% of your net worth in just a couple months is definitely the ultimate accountability.
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