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(Kitoko News) – In the ongoing crypto winter scythe, crypto payment provider Wyre will reportedly shut down services by the end of January.
Axios reports that Wyre CEO Ioannis Giannaros recently sent an email to employees at the company informing them of the company’s liquidation and plans to end service this month.
“We will continue to do what we can, but I want everyone to be prepared for the fact that we will have to scale back our business in the coming weeks,” the email said. We are still open, but we are scaling back to plan our next steps.
Some employees apparently knew this deployment was coming. On Dec. 31, his technical engineer Michael Staib, who previously worked for Wyre, said in his since-deleted LinkedIn post, “Wyre will not continue as a profitable business.” I was.
On Thursday, popular crypto wallet MetaMask appeared to confirm the demise of Wyre. announced With the removal of Wyre as a mobile aggregator, users will now be able to purchase cryptocurrencies directly from their digital wallets.
MetaMask urged users not to use Wyre on mobile aggregators, saying, “We are currently working on removing the extension, please be patient.”
Wyre was originally founded by Ioannis Giannaros and Michael Dunworth in 2013 and has raised a total of $29.1 million in nine funding rounds, according to Crunchbase data. Its investors include Kraken, Pantera Capital, Stellar Development Foundation, Samsung NEXT and Draper Associates.
In April last year, one-click checkout provider Bolt was in talks to acquire Wyre for a $1.5 billion price tag, but it closed its doors in September after Wyre and Bolt decided to remain independent businesses. Transaction is closed.
According to Danworth, crypto market volatility and general market conditions in technology were the main reasons for the failed trade.
The two companies had plans to strike a commercial agreement for Bolt to implement Wire’s one-click solution on Bolt’s customer platform, but following these developments at Wire, that seems unlikely.
Wyre isn’t the only company to be hit hard by the 2022 bear market. The collapses of Terra/Luna and FTX have sent shockwaves of contagion across the ecosystem, while several other companies have filed for bankruptcy, including Three Arrows Capital. Voyager Digital, Celsius, BlockFi, Core Scientific.
A number of other companies have also announced significant job cuts, including Kraken, Huobi, Galaxy Digital, Coinbase, Digital Currency Group, Genesis Global Capital, Dapper Labs, Bybit, Crypto.com and Silvergate Bank.
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