The crypto payments platform Wyre shuts down operations, blaming unstable market conditions.
Wyre has begun the wind-down process and has informed interested parties that they can now inquire about purchasing the company’s assets.
Wyre, a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency payments company, is shutting down after nearly ten years in operation, citing financial challenges caused by the bear market and not because of the hawkish “regulatory agency direction” in the United States.
According to a blog post from the company dated June 16, it made the difficult decision to wind down in order to “protect the best interest of our key stakeholders and customers.”
Wyre keeps protecting consumer assets. Until Friday, July 14, you can withdraw assets from the Wyre platform through the dashboard. The company added that we will have a different procedure to recover any assets still on the platform.
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
Additionally, the Wyre team stated that its assets are currently up for sale, saying: “If you’re interested in acquiring Wyre’s or its subsidiaries’ assets, please reach out to 88 Partners.”
Since one-click checkout company Bolt scrapped its plans to buy Wyre for $1.5 billion in September 2022, the company is said to have fallen into the drain.
The fiat-to-crypto on-ramp solution provider Juno urged its consumers to remove their crypto assets from the Juno platform and take self-custody on January 4, 2023, as a result of the alleged “uncertainty” surrounding its custodial partner Wyre.
MetaMask discontinued support for Wyre’s cryptocurrency payment services the next day due to the same issue.
A few days later, Wyre set a 90% withdrawal cap for all users but immediately lifted it on January 13 after receiving funding from an unknown “strategic partner,” raising hope that the company was recovering.
Wyre also reportedly lay off 75 employees in January.
The collapse of Wyre follows a long line of cryptocurrency and blockchain initiatives that have crumbled under a prolonged bear market.
Unbanked, a fintech company focused on cryptocurrency, BottlePay, a platform for Lightning Network payments, Terressa, a platform for nonfungible tokens, and TradeBlock, a platform for institutional trading run by the Digital Currency Group, were all shut down in May alone.