Coinbase Global pursues second round of job cuts

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global ( NASDAQ: COIN ) is implementing its second round of job cuts this year, it said Thursday. “Today, we announced our decision to reduce the size of two of our teams at Coinbase, impacting a total of just over 60 people," Elliott Suthers, director of Corporate & Global Communications at Coinbase, told Seeking Alpha via email. That compares with the exchange's first round of layoffs in which it cut roughly 1.1K staff , accounting for 18% of its total workforce. "First, our recruiting team, in connection with lower planned hiring needs. Second, our institutional onboarding team, as we have completed our institutional onboarding backlog. These are isolated and targeted actions by two teams to help Coinbase operate as efficiently as possible," he added. The move comes as the crypto ecosystem faces another major blow -- the high-profile FTX fiasco -- resulting in further deterioration in token prices this week. Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) dropped some 19% in the past five session and Coinbase ( COIN ) stock tanked 16.2% . Nevertheless, COIN shares saw some relief in Thursday afternoon trading, climbing 9.3% to $50.34, as risk assets broadly caught a bid in the wake of cooler inflation numbers for October. While Coinbase said it has minimal exposure to troubled crypto exchange FTX and no exposure to FTX token ( FTT-USD ), the beleaguered crypto issued by FTX, Oppenheimer analyst Owen Lau, who views COIN stock as an Outperformer, noted that the downward pressure in crypto prices may not be over yet which could boding poorly for COIN. "While COIN has minimal exposure to FTX, before there is enough evidence that the contagion risk is contained, the pressure on crypto prices will likely weigh on COIN," he wrote in a note to clients. Seeking Alpha contributor Bill Maurer contended that Coinbase stock could reach new lows due to the panic spreading around FTX .