Although the world has largely come to an economic halt amid coronavirus prevention measures, crypto companies MoonPay and Wyre have seen volume numbers climb.
“We've seen a huge spike in retail volume over the past few weeks,” Jack Jia, director of institutional sales for crypto payments outfit Wyre, told Cointelegraph in an April 3 email.
“Initially there was a higher uptick in sell-side volume right before markets crashed. Then, we started maxing out of processing capacity 3 days in a row on the buy side, immediately following the price crash a few weeks ago,” he added.
More crypto usage during global uncertainty?
Over the last several weeks, mainstream markets have seen significant downside action in the face of coronavirus fears, although recent days have shown signs of life and mild recovery.
Bitcoin dumped roughly 50% between March 12 and 13, in tandem with mainstream fears. Bitcoin seemingly decoupled from traditional markets several weeks ago, however, trading sideways and then up, arguably independent of the mainstream markets.
“Institutional investors have been getting more involved in crypto trading after 2017; when the traditional markets finally underwent a major correction in early March, everyone on Wall Street tried to get out of position, into USD, and that seems to have brought crypto markets down with it,” Jia said.
“In subsequent weeks, however, we are still seeing persistently higher volumes on the buy-side, mostly of Bitcoin, both from retail users and institutional OTC clients,” he added.
Other companies also seeing activity surge?
Fiat-to-crypto marketplace MoonPay has also seen increased customer numbers since the beginning of March, when global uncertainty ramped up.
“March was a record month for us at MoonPay where we experienced a surge in cryptocurrency purchase volumes of over 80% across our network of partner exchanges, wallets and decentralized applications,” Ivan Soto-Wright, MoonPay’s CEO and co-founder told Cointelegraph.
Looking toward a growth push focusing on customer and partner data privacy and security, MoonPay will add its current security advisor as its new interim CSO.
“With Nils Puhlmann joining as Interim CSO, we have a seasoned veteran who has built some of the strongest security teams at places like Twilio, Zynga and Electronic Arts, and we feel tremendously honored to have his guidance,” Soto-Wright said.
MoonPay’s focus on security comes after an IOTA hack several weeks ago that was traced back to MoonPay.
UPDATE April 11, 13:18 UTC: This article has been updated, mentioning Puhlmann’s current position, with MoonPay’s plans to add him as interim CSO.