The petition was quickly deleted and the number of signatures was not shown, but its list of objections to Coinbase’s status quo garnered a big reaction from the CEO.
A disgruntled Coinbase employee, identified only as 0x58E3, created a petition on Mirror.xyz on Thursday calling for the removal of three company executives. The petition, titled Operation Revive COIN, has since been withdrawn, but a screenshot has been uploaded to the Internet Archive and other websites. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong responded to the request on Twitter.
Details of the Complaint
Coinbase COO Emilie Choi, Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee, and Chief People Officer LJ Brock were targeted in the recall petition for “executing plans and ideas that have led to questionable results and negative values.” “. The author listed in detail eight of his failures. Among them, Coinbase’s failed NFT platform, revocation of job offers to new hires, mismanagement, creating a toxic workplace, and apathy. The petition concluded by stating that, “We hope to find people who have had experience in the cryptocurrency space and can run such a company more responsibly.”
Armstrong’s Reply
Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong used his Twitter account on Friday morning to respond to the request in a series of 16 tweets. Among other things, he tells petitioners that “our culture is to praise in public and criticize in private.” Armstrong also said he was surprised not to be on the petitioners’ list of executives to be fired and suggested that disgruntled employees are the ones who should be leaving the company. In his words, “This is really dumb on multiple levels.”
Among other arguments, Armstrong pointed that, “If you’re unhappy about something, work as part of the team to raise it along with proposed solutions (it’s easy to be a critic, harder to be a part of the solution).”
Other Twitter User’s Reactions
Although the information leak was made public for a brief time, Armstrong’s 16-twit-response created a lot of expectations and reactions, not all of them favorable to Coinbase. Here is a sample:
User @decentraltrader posted that, “You just typed 16 deflecting tweets instead of saying: “Thank you for the feedback. I hear your frustrations about culture and product strategy. We will assess and respond.”
@RayRaspberry1, replying to Armstrong’s posts, stated that, “It’s hard to raise a solution when the core of an issue is being obscured. Start with TRANSPARENCY and then people can be able to become informed enough to think about proposing actual solutions. Without transparency, the most efficient use of time IS criticism or avoidance.”
Coinbase shares took a beating in the market in May, while the entire cryptocurrency industry was hit by the turmoil, sparking concern from shareholders and customers. The exchange was also the subject of insider trading rumors recently.
It is worth recalling that last May, Will Nance, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wrote in a note that “Coinbase is unlikely to return to recent levels of profitability in the short term in the absence of a significant increase in the prices of the cryptocurrencies or volatility,” he wrote. “We think COIN stocks will have a hard time outperforming in the near term.”
The company reported lower-than-expected revenue last month, saying trading volume and monthly transaction users in the second quarter are expected to be lower than in the first. A new disclosure of risks in his filing sparked concerns among some users about the safety of their crypto assets held in custody by the company in the event of bankruptcy.
By Audy Castaneda
