The company informed its users of this decision and urged them to withdraw their assets by 14 July 2023, and any parties that would be interested in acquiring Wyre’s assets were advised to contact an advisory firm via email. Furthermore, the company revealed that it would start off a separate process to recover any assets that remain on the platform after 14 July. Wyre is currently focusing on liquidating assets for its investors.
In April 2022, Bolt Financial, a US-based payments-focused financial technology company, has announced its intention to acquire the crypto-services startup Wyre Payments for USD 1.5 billion. However, the deal eventually fell through in September 2022, and Wyre modified its withdrawal policy due to deteriorating market conditions in early January 2023.
According to Yahoo, Wyre initially denied any rumours about its closure and claimed to be scaling back its operations. However, it later clarified that it would be closing its doors due to tough market conditions and stiff competition from rival firms. Wyre was founded in 2013 and went through 9 funding rounds that brought in nearly USD 30 million. Some of its investors included Pantera Capital, Stellar Development Foundation, and Amphora Capital.
Insolvency concerns regarding Wyre started to surface in January 2023, when the firm introduced new withdrawal limits for its customers. At the time, the company announced that it had modified its withdrawal policy, which meant that users could no longer withdraw more than 90% of the funds in their accounts. Apart from not being able to completely empty their accounts, Wyre customers faced further withdrawal limits of 5 BTC and 50 ETH per day, as well as limits on fiat withdrawals.
These new rules came in the context of concerns over a potential liquidity crunch that would cause customers to withdraw their money quickly. Wyre officials stated that they had the interest of their community at heart and that they were exploring strategic options in order to keep the company going.
On 5 January 2023, Wyre parted ways with crypto wallet provider MetaMask. MetaMask posted an update on its Twitter page in which it urged users to refrain from using Wyre. On the same day, Axios reported that Wyre would actually shut down completely following a failed acquisition deal with Bolt.
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