On Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that roughly 14% of the crypto exchange’s workforce will be laid off. Armstrong cited volatility in the crypto market and the company’s expanding adoption of AI tools as the main reasons behind the move. Coinbase is far from the first crypto business to blame AI for cuts to its workforce. It has become a common story over the past few months, with key Coinbase competitors Gemini and Crypto.com making similar moves in March. Armstrong outlined the decision in an email sent to all Coinbase employees and later posted on X. According to Armstrong, the crypto market remains volatile from one quarter to the next, even as the company sits on diversified revenue and prepares for growth in areas like stablecoins and tokenization. At the same time, AI has accelerated workflows so that engineers now complete work in a day that once required weeks from entire teams, while non-technical staff are now handling production code. To adapt, Coinbase will flatten its structure to a maximum of five layers below the CEO and COO and eliminate roles filled only by managers. Impacted employees will receive at least 16 weeks of base pay, two additional weeks for each year of service at the company, their next equity vest, and six months of COBRA coverage in the United States with comparable support elsewhere. This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase: Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the… — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) May 5, 2026 “Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry,” Armstrong posted. “We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry.”