Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase shut down its office in Chicago after it decided to cancel plans to build a new matching engine for high-frequency trading. In the process, around 30 employees were laid off.
The Chicago engineering office, known as Coinbase Markets, was opened in May 2018. It was designed to work on electronic markets technologies including matching engines.
For Coinbase, high-frequency trading is no longer a priority, and instead it is focusing on building other new products, reports said.
San Francisco-based Coinbase has now decided to consolidate the matching engine efforts into San Francisco office. The company will relocate a small number of Chicago employees to San Francisco.
While opening the office last year, Coinbase had stated that the Chicago office would provide access to a large talent pool of engineers with deep exchange infrastructure experience. Coinbase previously had said that it was planning to hire 100 employees to Chicago office in the next three years.
According to CoinDesk, Chicago product manager Paul Bauerschmidt, a former CME Group executive, and engineering head Derek Groothius will also leave the company.
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