Wyre: How Yanni Giannaros Built Crypto's First On-Ramp to a $90M Run Rate, a $1.5B Bolt Deal, and Then a Shutdown

TL;DR: Wyre was a San Francisco crypto payments infrastructure company, often described as "Stripe for crypto." It gave developers APIs and a checkout widget so their apps could take card payments and turn them into crypto. It was co-founded by Ioannis "Yanni" Giannaros and Michael Dunworth, and started life as Snapcard before it was renamed Wyre in 2016. As discussed on the show, Wyre reached roughly a $90 million revenue run rate at its peak. As of an October 2026 web search, Bolt agreed to buy Wyre at a $1.5 billion valuation in April 2022, the deal was called off in September 2022, and Wyre announced it would wind down in June 2023. The one-line story: a team that spent six years and several pivots finding the right product, found it, nearly sold for $1.5 billion, and then ran into the 2022 crypto winter. Yanni told the whole story on The Product Market Fit Show.

What did Wyre do?

At its peak, Wyre had two products, as Yanni described on the show:

• A developer API. Crypto companies could use Wyre like a bank account with an API. They got routing and account numbers, could hold both dollars and crypto, and could move money between their app and the rest of the financial system.
• A checkout widget. Any crypto wallet or Web3 app could drop it in and let people buy crypto with a card. The app did not need its own licenses or payment integrations. Wyre wrote a blog post calling this an "on-ramp," and Yanni says they were the first to use the term back in 2018. Today "on-ramp" is a whole product category.

Customers included large Web3 platforms such as OpenSea, which Yanni said signed up early, when many of them were still processing almost nothing.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, Wyre's revenue jumped from a few million dollars to about $50 million within two to three months once the checkout widget took off in early 2020.

Who founded Wyre?

Wyre was founded by Ioannis (Yanni) Giannaros and Michael Dunworth, as of an October 2026 web search. Dunworth was CEO until 2020. Yanni then took over as CEO and later moved to executive chairman in January 2023.

The two met in 2012 at a San Francisco hacker house, which Yanni called "an orphanage with wifi." Yanni had found Bitcoin while working at SafeNet, a data encryption company, when someone posted the Bitcoin white paper on the internal portal and it drew hundreds of comments. He quit within a month of moving to San Francisco.

Their first ideas had nothing to do with crypto. The first version of Snapcard was a browser shopping cart that let people buy from any website with any payment method. One of those payment methods was Bitcoin. They posted it to the Bitcoin Reddit forum and it took off on day one.

Behind the scenes, Yanni, Michael and their first employee bought each order by hand with Yanni's credit card. They got into the Boost VC accelerator within a month of launch.

How much did Wyre raise?

Wyre raised money in many small rounds rather than one big one. As he shared on the show, the company had raised about $7 million across its early pivots, up to around 2018.

Verified figures, as of an October 2026 web search:

• In January 2021, the Stellar Development Foundation invested $5 million in Wyre, and Draper Associates and Great Oaks Venture Capital added $2.5 million, according to The Block and Stellar's press release.
• In April 2022, Bolt agreed to acquire Wyre at a $1.5 billion valuation.

On the show, Yanni also said Wyre raised a Series B with crypto investors after its 2018 pivot and was raising a Series C in late 2021 with larger investors joining. Public totals for Wyre's lifetime funding conflict between data providers, so we have left out a total figure.

How did Wyre find product-market fit?

It took six years. Yanni put it simply:

"Then in 2018, we made the decision to just wipe everything out." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

Here is the path, as he told it on the show:

1. 2012 to 2014: the shopping cart. Bitcoin holders used Snapcard to buy anything online. A 2014 Bitcoin bear market cut volumes sharply. The founders also saw that if Bitcoin won, merchants would accept it directly, so the cart was a stopgap. 2. 2014 to 2015: merchant payments. Snapcard built a Bitcoin payment processor. Merchants signed up, but almost nobody spent Bitcoin. 3. 2015 to 2016: the wallet and API. A customer asked if people could buy Bitcoin through them. Snapcard built a wallet with a public API. Bitcoin ATM operators and payout companies used it. Revenue reached $2 to $3 million in 2016, as he shared on the show. 4. 2016 to 2018: money transfer. They noticed customers buying Bitcoin in dollars and selling it in Mexican pesos inside the same wallet. People were using Bitcoin as a money transfer rail. The company renamed itself Wyre and went all in, reaching about $5 million in revenue by 2018, as he said on the show. 5. 2018 onward: crypto infrastructure. Crypto developers started using Wyre as their main bank account. That trend became the business.

Looking back, Yanni said the real asset was the infrastructure that piled up with each pivot: licenses, banking partners, FX and liquidity.

"We just didn't die. Literally, we just didn't die." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

He also gave a candid read on why it took so long:

"Yeah, it's a weird fit, product market fit. Like we have instances of product market fit, but the market just wasn't big enough." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

The hard call in 2018

The 2018 decision was not easy. The money transfer business was working and had a clear path. Yanni said he was on the side of keeping it. Michael pushed to go all in on crypto developers. After a long board meeting, they chose crypto, and sold the money transfer book of business to WorldFirst. Yanni says the choice turned out to be right.

The pivot meant shrinking from about 60 people to maybe 20 to 30, as he shared on the show. It was not a cash problem; the new bet simply needed a smaller team. He called 2018 to 2019 a really tough time.

Then the market arrived. Web3 apps needed a way for users to buy crypto without leaving for an exchange, and Wyre already had the rails.

"It was insane. We went from maybe a few million in revenue to doing 50 million in revenue within two or three months." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

In early 2020, Michael stepped back from the CEO role and Yanni took over. His plan was simple: focus only on the checkout widget, because it was working.

Why did Bolt want to buy Wyre?

Wyre was not trying to sell. In late 2021, it was raising its Series C when Bolt's founder, Ryan Breslow, reached out. Bolt ran one-click checkout for online merchants.

Yanni was not sold on the first pitch, which centered on one-click NFT checkout. Over more conversations, he came to see the fit differently. Bolt had the merchants. Wyre had the wallet infrastructure and the developer API.

"So, you know, they had hundreds of thousands of merchants, which is the hardest thing to do." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

He saw a combined company that could build a new kind of payments network on stablecoins, closer to a new PayPal than a crypto widget. He told Pablo he thought the combined business was a $10 billion opportunity or more.

Key stat: as of an October 2026 web search, Bolt agreed to acquire Wyre at a $1.5 billion valuation in April 2022. At the time it was reported as one of the largest crypto acquisitions outside of SPAC deals.

What happened to Wyre?

The two companies signed a definitive agreement. As Yanni explained on the show, that meant a closing period with conditions, including transferring Wyre's licenses, before the money changed hands.

During that period, the market turned. Crypto prices fell hard in 2022, tech valuations dropped, and the broader fintech market cooled. As of an October 2026 web search, the timeline from public reporting is:

• April 2022: Bolt agrees to buy Wyre at a $1.5 billion valuation.
• September 2022: the deal is called off. Axios reported that Bolt and Wyre said they would stay partners as separate companies. Reports pointed to the crypto downturn, the fintech selloff and pressure on Bolt's own valuation.
• January 2023: Wyre briefly limited customer withdrawals to 90% of account balances, then lifted the limit on January 13 after securing funding from an unnamed strategic partner. Yanni stepped down as CEO and became executive chairman, with Stephen Cheng as interim CEO.
• June 2023: Wyre announced it would wind down operations, citing market conditions, and said the decision was not due to any regulator. Customers could withdraw funds until July 14, 2023.

On the show, Yanni described what happened from the inside. The deal did not close on the closing date. Because the acquisition looked certain, Wyre had raised only the Series C money it needed. Revenue fell to around $30 million, in line with the market, as he shared on the show. A lifeline round bought a few months to restructure. A new round in December did not get across the line, and investors pushed for a sale of the business.

"But they just backed out on the closing date. And that left us in a really tough spot." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

He did not hide how much it hurt.

"It was a really tough experience for the next two to three months just because you get alienated and you blame yourself for everything that happened because you just take the whole responsibility." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

What pulled him through was his support system. His partner pushed him to offer advice to other founders, and the first call showed him how much he had learned about banking partners, licensing and building flywheels.

He also sees his thesis confirmed in hindsight. He pointed to Stripe's $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company, as the kind of outcome he and the Bolt team were reaching for. You can read that story in our post on Bridge's $1.1B sale to Stripe.

Today, Yanni is building again. He is the founder of Axel, an AI compliance startup that Pablo's fund has invested in, as disclosed on the show.

"And I love the whole art of building a company. It's just such a beautiful thing and solving problems that people really care about." — Yanni Giannaros, Wyre

Key lessons from Yanni Giannaros's playbook

1. Survival compounds. Every pivot left behind licenses, banking partners and FX infrastructure. When the crypto developer market finally showed up, Wyre already had what new entrants needed. Staying alive long enough to be ready is a strategy. 2. Watch what customers actually do. The money transfer business came from noticing users buy Bitcoin in dollars and sell it in pesos. The infrastructure business came from noticing crypto developers using Wyre as their bank. Both pivots came from usage data, not a brainstorm. 3. "Pull" from a small market is not the same as product-market fit. Wyre had passionate users at every stage, but the markets were too small. The checkout widget was different because the market itself was exploding. 4. A signed deal is not a closed deal. A definitive agreement can still fall apart before closing, especially with long regulatory closing conditions. Yanni's hindsight: Wyre raised only what it needed because the acquisition seemed certain. Keep enough runway to survive the deal not happening. 5. What you learned is worth a lot, even after a failure. That experience is now the foundation of his next company.

For more on hard pivots and hard endings, see when to kill a startup, Cameo's 90% down round and path to profitability, and the capital efficiency metrics that keep you alive.

Listen to the full interview: He grew to $90M ARR, was about to exit for $1.5B, and then it all fell apart.

FAQ: Wyre

Q: What was Wyre? A: Wyre was a San Francisco crypto payments infrastructure company. It offered developer APIs and a checkout widget that let Web3 apps and wallets accept card payments and convert them to crypto, an early version of what is now called a crypto on-ramp. It began as Snapcard and was renamed Wyre in 2016.

Q: Who founded Wyre? A: Wyre was co-founded by Ioannis "Yanni" Giannaros and Michael Dunworth. Dunworth was CEO until 2020, when Giannaros took over. Giannaros moved to executive chairman in January 2023.

Q: Did Bolt buy Wyre? A: No. Bolt agreed to acquire Wyre at a $1.5 billion valuation in April 2022, but the deal was called off in September 2022. The two companies said they would remain partners as separate businesses.

Q: Is Wyre still operating? A: No. Wyre announced in June 2023 that it would wind down operations, citing market conditions, and gave customers until July 14, 2023 to withdraw their funds.

Q: Who invested in Wyre? A: Verified investors include the Stellar Development Foundation, which invested $5 million in January 2021, and Draper Associates and Great Oaks Venture Capital, which added $2.5 million in the same round.

Sources: Listen to the Full Founder Story

• Yanni Giannaros, Co-Founder of Wyre — Bitcoin builder since 2012 who took Snapcard through five pivots, built crypto's first on-ramp widget, signed a $1.5 billion sale to Bolt, and lived through the deal falling apart in the 2022 crypto winter.

Listen to the full episode at pmf.show for the complete story.

Last updated: October 2026