U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global (COIN) is pausing new hires for two weeks and cutting cloud spending on Amazon Web Services, along with other cost-cutting measures following its recent weaker-than-expected earnings report and general crypto market rout, The Information reported, citing internal Coinbase emails to employees.
Coinbase also told employees that it will give them more stock awards to make up half the difference between the awards from earlier this year and the closing price of Coinbase stock 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 cut gas fees for internal wallet transfers, The Information said.
On Thursday afternoon, Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee shared a tweet describing what was mentioned in one of the emails cited by The Information.
The report follows Coinbase's blog earlier this week, in which COO Emilie Choi said the company is "slowing down hiring so we can align our hiring needs with our priority business goals." The move is a departure from Coinbase's plan to triple its headcount earlier this year, as reported.
In its Q1 earnings report, Coinbase reported lower-than-expected revenue and a quarterly loss of $430 million, compared with a profit of $840 million in Q4 2021. The company said it expects to incur about $1.7 billion in stock-based compensation expense, up from $1.5 billion previously, citing "hiring trends and acquisitions in the current year."
Coinbase ended Q1 with 4,948 full-time employees, up 33% from Q4 2021. In the last 12 months, Coinbase also said in its Q1 report that it added more than 3,200 net new employees.
Shares of Coinbase have fallen more than 70% this year.
Coinbase declined to comment on The Information's report.