Wyre Payments Becomes Latest To Limit Withdrawals Due To Crypto Winter

Amidst the crypto winter casualties continuing, the California-based crypto payment channel Wyre disclosed limits on withdrawals for all users. The payment company joins others that previously restricted withdrawals or laid off their workforces to survive in a bear time.

Per an official statement, the company has restricted users from withdrawing entire funds they stored on the platform.  But the platform allows cashing out of 90% of a user’s funds, with daily transaction limits imposed too. The number of BTC and ETH that could now be withdrawn within 24H is fixed at 5 and 50. Similarly, the daily transaction limit for the US dollar stands at $1,500,000 and €1,400,000 in Euro.

Notably, Wyre Payments announced the modification of its withdrawal policy via Twitter on January 7, days after the rumors that the platform would shut down its operations ending this month. This news could have pushed investors to withdraw funds from a doubted payment gateway. And as a result, the crypto company limited withdrawals in fear of insolvency. While addressing its community, Wyre noted in a tweet:

Acting in the best interest of our community is our top priority, and we are exploring strategic options for our company that will enable us to navigate the current market environment and deliver on our mission to simplify and revolutionize the global payments ecosystem.

Wyre Shakeup Executive Management

Additionally, the crypto company uncovered the management shakeup with Yanni Giannaros stepping down as a CEO and now will compensate as an executive chairman at the platform. On the other hand, Stephen Cheng, the chief compliance and risk officer, is allocated as the interim CEO of the company.

Considering the rising issues of the company, the crypto wallet service provider MetaMask also ended up with Wyre payments and announced its removal from the mobile aggregator on January 6. MetaMask added:

Wyre has been removed from our mobile aggregator. Please do not use Wyre.

Downtrends Affected Crypto Companies

Not only Wyre comes to wire, but many crypto services platforms suffered catastrophic effects of long-lasted bear trends. Even the market climate led several platforms to disappear from the ground completely. The crypto market has been recording price dumps consistently since BTC touched its all-time high (ATH) of $69,000 in November 2021.

Mainly, Terra’s (LUNA) collapse in May 2022 worsened the situation, which pulled back the prices of cryptos and lowered the trading volume. And it further increased sell-off pressure on the market and badly affected LUNA-linked ecosystems. 

Yet the crypto market was on track to recover from the previous losses, and the FTX fiasco, which came to happen the November of the same year, added fuel to the fire. Alongside changing investors’ sentiment on virtual assets, down prices lowered the revenue of crypto services platforms, consequently leading several crypto companies to file for bankruptcy.