Crypto Purge Continues: Another Payments And Infrastructure Provider Reportedly Shutting Down This Month

Wyre, a crypto payments, exchange and infrastructure provider founded in 2013, has reportedly informed its employees that it is shutting down in January 2023.

The year 2022 was not a good year for the cryptocurrency industry, with crypto empires collapsing, crypto firms and businesses filing for bankruptcy and numerous hacks that cost hundreds of millions.

Industry watchers dubbed the events that took place in the industry from the previous year as the cleansing or the purging of struggling companies.

But, with the prolonged market downturn and the growing mistrust of investors in crypto companies and exchanges, the purging seems to be continuing in 2023, and one of the companies that could end up closing down its business is Wyre.

During the holiday season, Wyre CEO Ioannis Giannaros sent out emails to employees informing them that the company would liquidate and terminate services in January 2023, Axios reported, citing Wyre's former employee as a source of information.

Before the previous year ended, another employee shared on LinkedIn that he was laid off and wrote, "#Wyre won't continue as a profitable business."

The post is no longer available on the platform.

Another former employee claimed that the company has not yet provided a severance package, which led to speculations that Wyre might not give it at all.

"We're still operating but will be scaling back to plan our next steps," Giannaros, who did not comment on former Wyre employees' claims, told Axios.

Rumors of Wyre shutting down were also mentioned by Join Royal co-founder, who noticed that "everyone in our shared Slack channel disabled except the GC," adding, "hearing no severance pay."

Giannaros, alongside Michael Dunworth, the co-founders of the crypto payments company, was able to raise $291 million across nine rounds of funding when they started Wyre 10 years ago, Crunchbase data reveals.

Dunworth left the company and cashed out 12.5% of his holdings soon after talks of Bolt acquiring the company for $1.5 billion in September last year did not push through.

Noah Weidner, a Fintech writer, shared on Twitter that he suspected the company may have been in trouble since September.

He said that he sent Wyre an email inquiring about its product called Yield and noted that the company's "response insinuated Wyre+Yield had been closed for months, but some apps were still using it for their treasury."

International Business Times has reached out to Wyre for comment and will update this article as soon as we hear from them.