The United States’ largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, is setting up an office in New York. The Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange has subleased 30,000 square feet from Steven Cohen’s investment firm Point72 at Related Companies’ 55 Hudson Yards in New York, the New York Post reported on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Coinbase confirmed the company's plans to establish an office in New York, stating, "We will be opening a second office in NYC to support flexible work schedules as we are a remote-first company."
Citing sources from a real estate firm, the New York Post notes that Coinbase’s upcoming New York office makes up a small chunk of Point72’s total 339,000 square feet at the tower. The report also notes that the Hudson Yards area is mostly known for corporate, media and law tenants but not technology companies.
“It’s a new brand of user not only for Related’s Hudson Yards but also for the entire far West Side area,” one market observer reportedly said.
Coinbase became even more discussed this year after going public on Nasdaq in April. The firm is known for its no-headquarter stance officially announced by CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong in February 2021. Last month, Coinbase was planning to shut down its office in San Francisco in 2022 as part of the company’s commitment to “being remote first.”
Related: Coinbase recruits former White House adviser to new policy role
Armstrong stressed that the closure of Coinbase’s headquarters in the Golden Gate City will be an important step in ensuring that no office becomes an unofficial headquarters. “Instead, we will offer a network of smaller offices for our employees to work from if they choose to,” he said.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Coinbase’s position on being remote-first echoes a similar no-headquarters stance by competitor Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said back in 2019 that office and headquarters are “old concepts like SMS and MMS.”
Disclaimer: This article was updated to specify that Coinbase will be setting up its second office in New York.