Study: Coinbase Underpaid Female and Black Employees at Much Larger Rates Than Those in the Technology Industry

An analysis conducted by the New York Times on internal pay data at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has unveiled disparities in salaries, showing their women and Black employees were underpaid.

Coinbase Underpaid Women and Black Employees, Claims NYT Study

According to the report, women employees were paid by Coinbase an average of $13,000 less than male employees at comparable job roles within the crypto exchange. The data gathered by the NYT includes pay details of 830 employees at the end of 2018.

As per an alleged unfair treatment of Black employees in terms of compensation, the figures showed that 16 salaried workers were paid $11,500, or 7%, less than all other employees in similar jobs, said the New York Times article.

The analysis, performed by Alexandra Marr, an economist specialized in statistical analysis for court cases involving pay bias, revealed that the gap between white and Black employees had grown to 11%.

The NYT claimed they confirmed the accuracy of the study with nine employees included in the data collected, “and colleagues they knew.”

As per the dimension of the salary disparities in Coinbase, NYT’s article said:

The pay disparities at Coinbase appear to be much larger than those in the tech industry as a whole, and at the few other tech companies that have had to release data.

Coinbase’s Reaction to the NYT Article

Right after the New York Times published the study, US-based crypto exchange issued a statement, signed by L.J. Brock, Coinbase’s chief people officer, pointing out that the company “is committed to fair and equitable compensation for every employee.” In fact, the statement is an internal email sent by Coinbase to their employees on December 29, 2020.

One of the statement’s excerpts reads as follow:

Coinbase is committed to ruthlessly eliminating bias in all our internal processes. We also recognize that it is best practice to regularly check our work, and while pay equity is critical at any stage of maturation, we believe that we have implemented the framework to ensure we are driving equitable outcomes. We recently retained a certified woman-owned law firm to partner with an expert software solution, Syndio, to audit our global pay data. We will examine our pay through the lens of ethnicity/race, in addition to gender.

There are also supporters of Coinbase involved in the controversy, such as Balaji S. Srinivasan, an angel investor, entrepreneur, and formerly Coinbase’s CTO, who said that “no one” can trust in the data analysis published by the author of the article, NYT’s tech reporter Nathaniel Popper, alleging that most of the executives at the crypto exchange “are women and people of color.”

However, this is not the first time that Coinbase is experiencing a similar controversy. In fact, the NYT also published a report on November 27, 2020, that revealed Coinbase has been facing “many internal complaints about discriminatory treatment” with black employees.