Singapore-headquartered Pillow plans to discontinue all its companies and app within the coming weeks, it warned prospects Friday, citing regulatory uncertainty that has claimed numerous different crypto startups in current quarters.
Pillow allowed prospects to spend money on Bitcoin, stablecoins and altcoins, and promised returns of as much as 18% — a determine that dropped to 14% because the market began to chill. It had raised about $21 million altogether and counted Accel India, Quona Capital, Elevation Capital and Leap Crypto amongst its backers. Pillow revealed its $18 million Sequence A funding in October final 12 months.
In a publish on Telegram, the two-year-old startup requested prospects on Friday to withdraw all their funds from the Pillow app and mentioned will probably be terminating all its present companies on July 31, 2023.
The transfer follows Pillow’s chief rival Flint shutting down its companies final month as a consequence of what it termed as “regulatory hurdles” and “unfavourable market sentiment.”
Each the startups, based and operated in India, counted the South Asian nation amongst their largest markets. The Reserve Financial institution of India, the nation’s central financial institution, has been pushing lenders to cease partaking with crypto startups for over a 12 months, making it just about not possible for web3 startups to function within the nation.
Crypto large Coinbase, one of many world’s largest exchanges, discovered this out the arduous approach. It suspended help for UPI funds instrument on its app in India final 12 months, making its eponymous change nonfunctional for any buy orders lower than 4 days after launching the buying and selling service on the earth’s second-largest web market.
Coinbase chief govt Brian Armstrong alleged final 12 months that there are “parts within the authorities there, together with at Reserve Financial institution of India, who don’t appear to be as optimistic on it. And they also — within the press, it’s been known as a ‘shadow ban,’ principally, they’re making use of tender strain behind the scenes to attempt to disable a few of these funds, which is perhaps going by UPI.”
