Bolt Acquires Wyre for $1.5 Billion, Looks to Dominate Web 3.0 Space

Online checkout company Bolt is heating up with a whole slew of partnerships. The latest is a crypto acquisition that could propel Bolt past the e-commerce competition. Bolt has acquired crypto company Wyre in the largest crypto merger to hit the market yet.

Here’s what to know about the crypto merger between Bolt and Wyre, and how this could shift the crypto merger and acquisition (M&A) space for the future ahead.

Bolt announced in early April it has acquired crypto company Wyre for $1.5 billion, which makes it the largest acquisition in the history of crypto (excluding SPACs). Based in San Francisco, Wyre will help bolt bring one-click cryptocurrency payments solutions to the masses.

Bolt said in a press release about its new subsidiary, “Wyre has spent a decade developing a platform that enables partners to rapidly build and deploy crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, which has made them the leading fiat-to-crypto and payment infrastructure company in the world.”

Bolt recently announced a number of other deals, including a partnership with global digital sports platform Fanatics and one-click checkout integration for BigCommerce online stores. However, the Wyre acquisition is undoubtedly making the biggest splash.

As for the deal with Wyre, Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla said, “Our goal is to come out before the end of the year with a combined product, where we can provide one-click crypto for merchants out of the box.”

Appearing on CoinDesk news, Bolt CEO Kuruvilla and Wyre CEO Ioannis Giannaros talked about the acquisition.

Kuruvilla said, “Bolt is used by thousands of merchants and we have tens of millions of shoppers already taking advantage of Bolt. And Bolt connects merchants and shoppers with all different payment models, and now, with the Wyre acquisition, we are giving shoppers and merchants friction-free one-click access to all crypto infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, Giannaros said, “Wyre was founded under the principle of, ‘How do we get billions and billions of people into the crypto space?’ We do that through a really nice, easy on-ramp. We’re one of the largest on-ramp providers out there.”

Together, Wyre and Bolt hope to combine their skills and become a crypto force to be reckoned with.

Bolt’s purchase of Wyre is the largest crypto acquisition to date, but the arena is just getting started. The total value of crypto M&As grew 5,000 percent in 2021. This metric has been propelled by deals like Galaxy Digital’s $1.2 billion purchase of Bitgo. There’s also Coinbase, which completed at least 13 acquisitions in 2021.

PwC wrote last year, “We expect a continued acceleration in crypto-related IPOs and acquisitions in 2022 across trading platforms, digital payment applications, and related products.” So far, they’re right on the money.