Crypto Payments Company Wyre Announces Shutdown

• The firm cited problems from the crypto winter rather than regulatory concerns.
• Wyre restricted client withdrawals to 90%, however on January 13 they lifted the limit.

After almost a decade in business, San Francisco’s Wyre, a cryptocurrency payments startup, has announced shutdown, citing the problems of the crypto winter rather than any strong “regulatory agency direction” in the U.S. On June 16th, the firm said it will be shutting down in order to “protect the best interest of our key stakeholders and customers.”

The company stated:

“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.”

Struggling for a While

By stating that interested parties may buy Wyre’s or its subsidiaries’ assets by contacting 88 Partners, Wyre’s team further hinted that the firm was selling its assets. Since September 2022, when the one-click checkout startup Bolt backed out of plans to acquire Wyre for $1.5 billion, the company has reportedly been in a tough phase.

Juno, a provider of a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp solution, advised its clients to self-custody their crypto assets on January 4th, 2023, rather than leaving them on the Juno platform due to “uncertainty” surrounding its custodial partner Wyre.

In a similar move the following day, MetaMask no longer supported Wyre’s crypto payment services. A few days later, Wyre restricted client withdrawals to 90%, however on January 13 they lifted the limit after receiving funding from an unnamed strategic partner.

Wyre is the latest crypto and blockchain company to shut down as a consequence of the ongoing bear market. In May alone, the crypto winter caused the closure of several crypto fintech firms, in addition to mass layoffs.