Coinbase Eyeing Omni’s Crypto Engineering Team For Acquihire

Coinbase is reportedly in talks to acquire rentals startup Omni’s engineering team.

Two sources told TechCrunch that Omni also laid off seven operations team members on Friday (October 4). The startup has also received interest in its engineering team from Thumbtack.

The news comes as Omni has been struggling. Launched in San Francisco as an on-demand storage company that would pick up and tag items from your home, then store them in a warehouse, it eventually started to expand into other cities. In April, Omni began allowing users to earn money by renting out their stored goods to other customers. But one month later, it began selling its storage business to rival Clutter, which led to customer complaints about changing prices and misplaced items.

There were also plans to roll out a white-label platform so that brick-and-mortar merchants could run their own rental business. While the company was bolstered by a $25 million round of funding from crypto company Ripple last year, there were still worries that this latest endeavor would flop.

As a result, the company has been in talks with Coinbase to hire some of its engineering staff, who would work on Coinbase Earn. Some employees even started the interview process at Coinbase on Friday. A Coinbase spokesperson told TechCrunch, however, there has been no official deal yet.

Coinbase Earn enables users to earn crypto rewards when they finish online educational programs. And earlier this month, the company also launched a rewards program for its U.S. customers that will give users money back on every USD Coin they hold.

With USDC Rewards, people will earn 1.25 percent APY on every USD Coin they hold on Coinbase.

“USDC Rewards is a way for Coinbase customers to earn a return on USD Coin holdings without having to sell or transact any cryptocurrency,” Coinbase said in the post.