As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week’s top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly.
COINBASE TO SLOW HIRING, REASSESS HEADCOUNT NEEDS: Coinbase (COIN) announced Monday that it will “slow hiring and reassess our headcount needs” during the market downturn, after initially planning to triple its workforce in 2022. Emilie Choi, president and COO, said in a blog post that the changes are not expected to have any material impact to the previously communicated expense outlook for Q2, or FY22. Choi said: “Given current market conditions, we feel it’s prudent to slow hiring and reassess our headcount needs against our highest-priority business goals. Headcount growth is a key input to our financial model, and this is an important action to ensure we manage our business to the scenarios we planned for, specifically the potential Adjusted EBITDA we are aiming to manage to… Big picture: We know this is a confusing time and that market downturns can feel scary. But as we said at last week’s Town Hall, we plan for all market scenarios, and now we are starting to put some of those plans into practice. We’re in a strong position – we have a solid balance sheet and we’ve been through several market downturns before, and we’ve emerged stronger every time.”
Additionally on Tuesday, Coinbase stated in a corporate blog post: “As crypto asset prices fluctuate, the base and quote order size limits on our Exchange can diverge in notional terms. We try to keep up with the market by updating these limits on a regular basis, but we realize the frequency of the changes can lead to customer confusion. Instead of maintaining both base min order size and quote min order size, we are changing our size limits to consider simply the notional value of the order submitted to our exchange…