Coinbase Falls Up And Passes Bear Market

Coinbase discontinues its affiliate program. (photo: doc. Antara)

JAKARTA – The decline in the crypto market in recent months has shaken the digital asset industry including crypto trading platform Coinbase. The cryptocurrency trading company was also affected, recently reportedly closing its affiliate marketing program in the United States.

According to a Business Insider report, Coinbase is temporarily closing its affiliate marketing program. According to a recent report, the crypto exchange suspended its program from July 19, citing the current state of the crypto market which is seen as having a negative impact on the industry.

One of the crypto influencers, Ben Armstrong who is the founder of Bitboy Crypto, has stated that Coinbase has the potential to go bankrupt due to the decline in the crypto market.

While the same view was expressed by the founder of 6th Man Ventures, Mike Dudas, who assessed that the launch of Coinbase's NFT platform had failed in the midst of a bear market. He called this one of the triggers for the downfall of the crypto industry.

On the other hand, Coinbase's share price (COIN) experienced a significant drop of 85% from its all-time high (ATH) of US$357, dropping to US$53.70.

It didn't stop there, negative sentiment also came from Goldman Sachs which downgraded Coinbase for sale. The reason is, the crypto trading platform was heavily affected by the continuing downward trend in crypto prices. Coinbase's value, which stood at ATH 75 billion US dollars last year, has decreased to just 12.4 billion US dollars.

According to Coingape, in a letter to its shareholders, the company reported that its first financial quarter results are directly affected by market volatility. They reported a financial loss of $430 million in the first quarter of 2022.

Trading volumes and assets on the platform both experienced a significant decline. In addition, Coinbase also announced it plans to cut their workforce by 18% of its total workforce.

A different move was taken by Coinbase's rival, Binance.US, which recently announced the launch of a free-of-charge Bitcoin spot trading product. This is a major blow to Coinbase, as the crypto platform has a spot trading fee of $2.99.