, Columnist
Coinbase Made Some Pets.com-Level Mistakes
Overspending and buying a Super Bowl ad despite signs of a bubble echoed blunders of the dot-com collapse.
Coinbase employees in happier times.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Crypto has long been sold as the tradition-busting future of finance, but its collapse is following a decades-old script.
Take Coinbase. The crypto exchange went public at $250 a share in April 2021, when Bitcoin was worth more than $63,000, near its all-time high. Now Bitcoin is flirting with $20,000, and Coinbase is trading at less than $50 a share. It’s also laying off 18% of its workforce, roughly the number of people it hired this year.