Another brutal week for crypto and crypto companies – TechCrunch

Hello everyone! Welcome back to Week in Review! This newsletter recaps the most recent events. readTechCrunch will be publishing stories from the past week. Our goal: If you’ve had a busy few days, you should be able to click into this on Saturday, give it a skim, and still have a pretty good idea of what went down this week.

I’ll be AFK for the next two newsletters, with the excellent Henry Pickavet subbing in for me while I’m gone. Henry is one of the best humans I know — so be nice!

The Most read story this week, unfortunately, was one of layoffs — specifically, layoffs at Coinbase. The crypto exchange announced on Tuesday that it’ll be laying off 18% of its workforce, with CEO Brian Armstrong saying the company “grew too quickly” in the last year and a half.

Other stuff

Kaiser breached: Oof. One employee’s email account was hacked. Nearly 70,000 patient records could be exposed. In a notice sent to impacted patients, Kaiser says the “potentially exposed” data included names, dates of service and lab test results.

More layoffs: Coinbase wasn’t the only company to disclose layoffs this week. Real estateRedfin, Compass and Wealthsimple both confirmed reductions of approximately 450 employees, while Compass and Compass each confirmed cuts of approximately 450 employees.

Spotify buys a voice-simulation business: Val Kilmer was treated for throat cancer in 2014 by a tracheotomy. For his role in the recently released “Top Gun: Maverick,” London-based startup Sonantic was asked to re-create Kilmer’s voice with AI. Spotify announced this week that Sonantic will be acquired. Why? They’re not getting too specific, but it’s not too hard to think of ways Spotify could put realistic-yet-simulated voices to use — think indie audiobooks or auto-generated podcast commercials.

Elon sued Dogecoin: Is it Elon’s fault that Dogecoin — a cryptocurrency that started as a joke — massively spiked in value and then imploded? A class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan this week claims Musk “used his pedestal as World’s Richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement” and seeks damages of $258 billion.

The SpaceX letter: On Wednesday of this week, employees at SpaceX published an “open letter” to the company’s internal chat system that said “Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” and asked SpaceX to “swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.” By Friday morning, at least one of the employees involved in the letter had been terminated, with SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell calling it “overreaching activism.”

audio stuff

Did work say it’s time to head back to the office? Do you need something to listen while on your commute? Have you ever wondered what the voice of your favorite TechCrunch writer is? Good news! We’ve got podcasts. There are many. (Fun fact: given that we’re spread out all over the world, many of us have talked to each other more on podcasts than we have in real life.)

This week Lucas and Anita talked with the inimitable Aaron Levie (CEO of Box) about his thoughts on web3 — specifically, why it won’t work. Chain Reaction has the video.

Additional stuff

Want even more TechCrunch? TechCrunch+ offers even more information on the topics that our subscribers are most interested in. Here are some of the highlights from this week:

Which visa is best to bootstrap a startup?: Immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn is back with another edition of the “Dear Sophie” advice column, this time helping a German founder figure out the right way to navigate bootstrapping a startup in the U.S.

Brex leaves the SMB market. What’s next?: This week Brex announced that it’s largely stepping out of the small- to medium-sized business market, with plans to cut services for its smaller customers come August 15. Alex and Mary Ann take a look at what this could mean for the market — and Brex’s competitors.

What’s the catalyst behind the crypto crash?: Cryptocurrency prices continued to slide this week. Why? In this week’s edition of The Exchange, Alex gives an overview of some of the biggest “issues that are currently tripping up the web3 market.”