Coinbase says it's withdrawing some job offers and extending a hiring freeze indefinitely

• Coinbase said in a blog post that it will rescind some job offers and freeze hiring indefinitely.
• The cryptocurrency exchange listed on Nasdaq in April 2021 and entered the Fortune 500 this year.

Coinbase, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, said that it will withdraw some job offers and pause hiring indefinitely.

It blamed "current market conditions" for the moves in a blog post on Thursday. "We will extend our hiring pause for both new and backfill roles for the foreseeable future and rescind a number of accepted offers," wrote LJ Brock, the chief people officer.

Coinbase's decision underlined how quickly the environment had changed for what was once the darling of the cryptocurrency world.

Coinbase was cofounded by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam in 2012. It listed on Nasdaq in a highly anticipated debut in April last year and was worth almost $86 billion after its opening day of trading.

Last month, it became the first crypto company to become a Fortune 500 company.

But this year, a cryptocurrency market slump took away Coinbase's luster as bitcoin's value halved, Insider reported last month.

That in turn dented the company's prospects. Its revenues fell 27% for the first three months of the year compared to the same period last year, per CNBC.

Coinbase also warned that it could confiscate users' holdings if it went bust, Insider has reported.

On May 17, Coinbase said that it was slowing hiring for 2022 but the hiring freeze will now last indefinitely. It will also "rescind a number of accepted offers," Brock wrote in the blog post.

Coinbase has almost 5,000 employees compared with about 1,700 last year, according to Bloomberg, with hiring costs hitting about $1.7 billion in the most recent quarter.

Coinbase is not the only crypto platform to rethink its hiring plans: Gemini said it had laid off a tenth of its workforce, TechCrunch reported on Thursday.

'I was fired even before I started'

Coinbase's sudden change in hiring plans took at least one candidate by surprise. He told Insider on a family visit to Asia that he was still going through the onboarding process as of last week.

The candidate, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had accepted Coinbase's offer of a role in Seattle in March.

Despite the recent crypto slump, he said he was still excited about joining the industry.

So when he woke up on Friday and saw an email titled "Update to your Coinbase offer," he thought it was about how the company was going to reduce his compensation after the recent market crash.

"But it was much worse. I was fired even before I started with the company," he told Insider.

The recipient said that he had recently signed a lease with a "comfortable-enough" apartment in Seattle. "Now I may have to pay back the landlord for any penalties if I cancel the lease. Financially, it's very stressful."

There was also the added pressure to land a job in the US soon as he was a foreign student on a temporary visa, he said.

For now, the recipient has decided to look for roles outside the cryptocurrency sphere.

"I wanted to join Coinbase because it was so big and competitive and even joined Fortune 500, but now I know how volatile and unpredictable cryptocurrency can be, I'm done with it," he said.

Coinbase did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the full letter that Coinbase sent to some job candidates to tell them that their job offers had been withdrawn.