By Adedapo Adesanya
Peer-to-peer (P2P0 crypto marketplace, Paxful, has announced its return to business after suspending operations in April 2023.
In an update posted on its website, Paxful said its team had relaunched the marketplace after more than 30 days.
The platform said its wallet had “remained fully operational” during the suspended service, however, it is unclear how Paxful intends to move forward.
“Over the last month, our team has worked diligently to get the marketplace back online with the safety and security of users paramount,” said Paxful.
Business Post had reported that Paxful CEO, Mr Ray Youssef, blamed the regulatory environment in the United States as the reason for the shutdown and claimed it likely wouldn’t become operational again.
He was also at loggerheads with the company’s co-founder, Mr Artur Schaback, over claims of misappropriation of company funds, money laundering, and evasion of United States sanctions against Russia, before the suspension of the marketplace’s operations.
Mr Youssef had used the situation to encourage customers with tokens in the exchange to transition to self-custody or use other service providers like Bitcoin payments company Bitnob, Yellowcard, and then the newly created peer-to-peer marketplace, Noones.
Amid Paxful’s suspended service, Mr Youssef was speculated to have been working with Block’s TBD division to launch a peer-to-peer crypto trading platform called Civilization Kit, or Civ Kit.
According to its white paper, Civ Kit will be built on Nostr, the decentralized network enabling encrypted end-to-end private messaging.
Modupe Gbadeyanka