Altcoin News: Coinbase Exchange Closes Chicago Office and Dismisses 30 Employees

April 25, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Coinbase representatives said it was decided to move the office from Chicago to a San Francisco office that does the same job.

The Chicago-based division of the exchange, which operated under the Coinbase Markets project, was engaged in the development of specialized market technologies, such as high-frequency (HFT) trading tools.

“To become the ‘Google of crypto’ we have to be comfortable making big bets. Some of them will be audacious and some of them won’t work out,” said one of the company’s representatives.

Coinbase initially had high hopes for the Chicago office. Their work was to provide the company with “access to a large talent pool of engineers with deep exchange infrastructure experience” and “enable us to continue offering the most performant and reliable cryptocurrency exchange.”

The decision to reduce the Chicago office and entrust its functions to the San Francisco unit indicates that the company is changing its priorities, increasingly focusing on large institutional clients whose service requires the redistribution of resources in areas such as custodial services and OTC trading.

Author: Marko Vidrih