Coinbase stock falls faster than bitcoin after hiring freeze, new project pause
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Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) shares are dropping 7.4% in Friday early afternoon trading as bitcoin (BTC-USD) falls 4.4% in the past 24 hours to trade at ~$28.8K.
On Tuesday, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) disclosed that it's slowing hiring as crypto markets slump. Since then, The Information reported that the firm instituted a hiring freeze, is pausing new projects, and plans to slash its cloud spending on Amazon Web Services (AMZN), among other cost-cutting measures, according to internal emails.
As recently as last week, Coinbase (COIN) CFO Alesia Haas told CNBC the company has navigated through crypto cycles before "and we've always come out stronger." Meanwhile, COIN stock has dropped 72% in the past year, while bitcoin (BTC-USD), the world's largest cryptocurrency, has declined 29% during that same period as seen in this graph.
As for crypto markets, activity in bitcoin (BTC-USD) options suggest investors are increasingly bearish, with the put-call ratio of bitcoin open interest reaching a 12 month high of 0.72 on Thursday, CoinDesk reported, citing a note from research firm Delphi. The higher ratio indicates investors may either be expecting bitcoin to fall or they could be hedging against a decline.
In other crypto action, ether (ETH-USD) -3.8% to ~$1.94K, Binance Coin (BNB-USD) -3.0%, XRP (XRP-USD) -3.5%, Cardano (ADA-USD) -5.0%, and dogecoin (DOGE-USD) -3.9%.
Terra (LUNA-USD), the token linked with USCoin (USDC-USD), -9.8%.
Earlier this week, Terraform Labs' legal team quits after UST, LUNA meltdown