San-Francisco-based crypto payments firm Wyre is shutting down after almost 10 years in business, citing the financial challenges of the bear market, and not anything to do with any hawkish “regulatory agency direction” in the United States.
In a June 16 blog post, the firm stated that it made the difficult decision to wind down to “protect the best interest of our key stakeholders and customers.”
“Wyre continues to secure customer assets. If you have assets on the Wyre platform, you can continue to withdraw them via Wyre’s dashboard until Friday, July 14th. After then, we will have a separate process to recover assets remaining on the platform,” the firm said.
After nearly a decade, Wyre is winding down. Due to market conditions, we made this decision to protect the best interest of our key stakeholders and customers. This decision is not due to any regulatory agency direction. Wyre continues to secure customer assets.
— Wyre (@sendwyre) June 16, 2023
The Wyre team also suggested that its assets are now up for sale, noting that: “If you’re interested in acquiring Wyre’s or its subsidiaries’ assets, please reach out to 88 Partners.”
The firm has reportedly been circling the drain since one-click checkout company Bolt canceled its plans to acquire Wyre for $1.5 billion back in September 2022.
A few months later, trouble started brewing as fiat-to-crypto on-ramp solution provider Juno urged its users On Jan. 4 to get their crypto assets off the Juno platform and self custody, due to the reported “uncertainty” surrounding its custodial partner Wyre.
The following day, MetaMask also winded down support for Wyre’s crypto payment services over that same issue.
Just a few days after this, Wyre went on to impose a 90% withdrawal limit for all its users, but then promptly lifted that 90% cap on Jan. 13 after securing financing from an unnamed “strategic partner”, suggesting the firm was on the mend.
Notably however, Wyre had also reportedly laid off 75 employees in January.
Related: ‘We had to change strategies,’ says SEC enforcement director on recent actions: Report
Wyre adds itself to an ever growing list of crypto/blockchain firms and projects that have buckled under the pressure of a long running bear market.
In May alone, crypto fintech firm Unbanked, Lightning Network payments platform BottlePay, crypto exchange HotBit, NFT platform Terressa and Digital Currency Group’s institutional trading platform TradeBlock all shut down due to crypto winter.
Magazine: Cryptocurrency trading addiction — What to look out for and how it is treated
