Weld Money Pulls Plug on Ukrainian Operations—Another Crypto Casualty in Regulatory Crossfire

Another day, another crypto firm folding under geopolitical pressure. Weld Money—a blockchain payments startup—just axed its Ukrainian operations without fanfare. No sunset period, no migration path—just a quiet exit stage left.

While the company hasn’t cited explicit reasons, the timing reeks of regulatory fatigue. Ukraine’s aggressive crypto taxation framework (rolled out mid-2024) likely turned profitability into a pipe dream. Funny how ‘decentralized’ projects keep centralizing their exits when compliance costs bite.

For local users? Yet another reminder that ‘self-custody’ beats trusting third parties—especially those with one foot already out the door. Meanwhile, traditional banks smirk as another ‘disruptor’ learns that moving money globally isn’t quite as easy as whitepapers claim.

Other problems

Note, in a conversation with Incrypted, former employees of Weld Money pointed out other problems of the project, namely, non-payment of salaries. So, according to one of them, a marketer in the cryptocurrency sphere Dmitry Kryshtal, before some members of the team the debt reaches several years.

“The news about the curtailment of activities came out very timely, against the background of changes in the regulatory field and the departure of the market leader – Trustee Plus,” – believes Kryshtal.

Recall, earlier crypto wallet Trustee Plus closed registration for users from Ukraine. The team cited legal uncertainty as one of the reasons for the decision.

“There are problems more internal, I know that the founders have not settled with almost the entire development and marketing team. Former employees have been waiting for their salaries for over a year (since 2022 to be exact). The amounts vary from a couple of months’ salary to six months’,” Kryshtal noted.

According to him, the project management asked former employees not to talk about it publicly, constantly promising to pay everything. However, at a certain point, they stopped responding to questions about when the employees would receive the settlement, he said.

Kryshtal noted that he continues to keep in touch with the project team, to which the company still has a debt.

The Incrypted team has reached out to other former Weld Money employees for comment. We have also sent an additional request to the platform’s co-founder Alexey Bobok and will update the story as soon as and if we receive a response.

Recall, in September 2022, Weld Money launched a cryptocurrency card in partnership with Unex Bank in the Mastercard payment system. It could be used to pay in terminals using, for example, USDT on the account.

Сообщение Weld Money team announced the termination of its activities in Ukraine появились сначала на INCRYPTED.