Several sources claim that Wyre, a bitcoin payments company, is shutting its operations.
After Bolt, another payments business, abandoned its proposal to acquire Wyre in September, Wyre is allegedly winding down.
Though the company is “cutting back,” Wyre CEO Ioannis Giannaros told Axios that it is “still operating.”
Alleged Closure of Wyre Cryptocurrency Payments Firm; CEO Disagrees with Reports of Operations Winding Down
Axios reported on January 4, 2023 that the digital currency payments firm Wyre was winding down its activities.
CEO Ioannis Giannaros advised colleagues in an email obtained by Axios that “we’ll continue to do everything we can, but I urge everyone to brace themselves for the possibility that we will need to unwind the firm over the next few of weeks.”
According to reporters Brady Dale and Lucinda Shen for the news outlet, Michael Staib, a former employee of Wyre, wrote about the incident on Linkedin.
Giannaros and Michael Dunworth launched the business in 2013, and Wyre’s valuation peaked at $1.5 billion.
The payments company Bolt was planned to buy Wyre, but the deal was abandoned in September.
Dunworth left Wyre not long after Bolt decided against the acquisition.
“We will continue our existing commercial cooperation with Wyre to pioneer the route of crypto integration into our ecosystem, delivering Wyre’s revolutionary crypto infrastructure to the world,” Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla stated at the time. Giannaros did not address the topic of winding down in an email to Axios