Ready Closes Crypto Card Project Due to Issuer Kulipa's Shutdown
Self-custody wallet Ready (formerly Argent) shut down its crypto credit card project on Wednesday due to the sudden closure of issuer Kulipa.
Co-founder Itamar Lesuisse stated that no prior notice was received, and eligible subscriptions will be automatically refunded, with user assets unaffected due to self-custody.
Kulipa provided card services for about 20 wallets and fintech companies, also impacting Solflare. It had just completed a $6.2 million seed round led by Flourish Ventures and 1kx four months before its closure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Ready, formerly Argent, has long focused on Starknet smart contract wallets and self-custody models, collaborating with Paris startup Kulipa to launch a stablecoin card that deducts directly from wallets, avoiding the risks of traditional card projects holding user funds.
In terms of capital, Kulipa positioned itself as a stablecoin issuance infrastructure, serving about 20 clients including Ready and Solflare, and issuing over 120,000 cards. However, it collapsed rapidly due to solvency issues after completing a $6.2 million seed round, exposing the vulnerabilities in early crypto payment intermediaries' capital and operations.
Similar cases have been seen where several crypto card issuers shut down due to compliance or liquidity issues, with user funds trapped in bankruptcy liquidation due to non-self-custody designs; the current crypto consumer payment landscape is in a filtering stage from custodial to true self-custody settlements.
This essentially represents a restructuring of the industry chain: the collapse of the intermediary issuing layer forces wallets to directly connect to more mature payment tracks, with the mechanism being that self-custody designs isolate risks at the issuer rather than the user assets.
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- Self-custody isolates issuer risks
- Seed rounds cannot cover solvency
- Payment intermediaries are the first to be cleared out.