By Arlenys Tabare
The online platform for buying, selling and storing cryptocurrencies, Coinbase, announced this Tuesday through a statement that will eliminate at least 700 jobs amid a strategy to optimize its operations due to market volatility.
In the statement to its employees, the San Francisco, California-based company noted that “while we have overcome that cyclicality many times before and have come out stronger, we are currently in a bear market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period more agile, faster and more efficient for our next phase of growth.”
The wave of layoffs represents approximately 14% of its workforce and it also occurs at a time when the platform is integrating artificial intelligence into its operations processes to increase productivity and reduce costs.
According to Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the company will begin experimenting with one-person teams and reorienting some jobs to combine the roles of engineers, designers and product managers. “This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI in all facets of our work,” said.
The company estimates restructuring costs will increase to between $50 million and $60 million. By the end of 2025, Coinbase had a workforce of approximately 5,000 employees; However, he hopes that the layoffs can be completed by the middle of this year.
AI layoffs continue to rise
Coinbase is not the only company to announce layoffs following increased investment in artificial intelligence; This year this seems to be the trend mostly among companies in the technology sector that seek to streamline their operations processes while reducing costs.
For example, Pinterest announced layoffs of up to 15% of its workforce to invest in AI in the month of January; eBay reported the 6% cut in February of its workforce to focus on “strategic priorities” related to AI; Dell Applied sciences announced the layoffs of about 11,000 employees in March and stated that it is investing in the implementation of artificial intelligence and other servers, the same thing Oracle and Meta reported in April.
But the incorporation of new technologies and their use to replace human labor is putting millions of workers on alert, who believe that in the future they will lose their jobs.
Recently, In research developed by Boston Consulting Neighborhood (BCG), It was stated that 50% of jobs in the United States alone could be “transformed” by the incorporation of AI in a period of three years.
In this regard, Matthew Kropp, managing director and necessary partner of Boston Consulting Neighborhood, commented that “currently, there is an almost instinctive reaction: we will cut jobs and do layoffs. It is indiscriminate, and that is detrimental to society because we need people to have jobs, but also to the companies themselves. The functions that people in these positions perform will be different, even if the job continues to exist,” he said.
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