Crypto payments startup Wyre acquires Hedgy

Wyre, a US-based crypto payments startup, has announced that it has acquired bitcoin smart contract derivatives platform Hedgy.

This marks Wyre’s second acquisition – the first being the acquisition of Chinese payments solutions, Remitsy, last year. As part of the deal, Wyre announced that Hedgy co-founder and CEO Matt Slater will join the company as an advisor.

Wyre said that the acquisition of Hedgy will bring it closer to offering a derivatives software product that is compliant with federal commodity laws and regulations.

"This is a really highly regulated area, and in this sense Hedgy generally has been extremely ahead of the time. They were doing smart contract derivatives at the time ethereum wasn't even there yet,” Wyre co-founder and COO Ioannis Giannaros told CoinDesk

The company noted that the current volatility in the crypto markets is part of the appeal to retail speculators, investors, and professional traders. It expects this volatility to go down eventually, which will then see an increase in demand for creative financial products such as crypto asset swaps, options, and futures.

However, Wyre said that at the current higher levels of volatility it is expecting derivatives to have value in several different scenarios such as mining, security token offerings, fund managers, and hedging commercial risk.

“In other words, we believe that there may be compelling use cases for derivatives in current levels of volatility and that there may be an even broader use of derivatives if volatility reduces over time," it said.

Wyre said that Hedgy has built “an incredibly powerful product that can unlock a new level of accessibility for financial instruments around the world,” adding that it will incorporate its technology into its stack for partners and users.