Crypto Winter: Coinbase is laying off another 20% of its workforce

1/10/23 7:00PM

Winter is here

‍Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, announced yesterday that the crypto-exchange would be cutting 20% of its workforce. As a bellwether for the sector, Coinbase’s second round of cuts — following an 18% reduction in headcount back in June 2022 — suggests the “crypto winter” is yet to show any signs of thawing.

‍Self-help

‍These recent layoffs, along with other restructuring measures, aim to bring Coinbase’s operating expenses down 25% this quarter to offset falling revenues that have tumbled alongside digital asset prices and activities.

The measures may help reverse some of the 82% slide in Coinbase's share price over the last 12 months, but the biggest driver of Coinbase’s fortune is simply still the prices of digital assets. The weekly returns of both Coinbase’s shares and Bitcoin, show that they move almost in lockstep. It seems nearly impossible for the company to get back to where it was without an uptick in crypto trading, prices or both.

Armstrong admits the impact that external factors have had, saying that thanks to “unscrupulous actors in the industry” the crypto world now has a “black eye”, presumably a reference to disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Additionally, the extra scrutiny the sector is now receiving from regulators will likely add to expenses, with Coinbase receiving a $50m fine this year from New York regulators and having to commit another $50m towards the company’s compliance.

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5