Popular peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace Paxful is back online after shutting down services in April 2023.
Paxful announced on its website that its team had relaunched the marketplace after more than 30 days. Though the platform stated that its wallet “remained fully operational” during the service suspension, it is unclear how Paxful intends to proceed.
“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.
Prior to the suspension of the marketplace’s operations, CEO Ray Youssef and co-founder Artur Schaback exchanged accusations about misappropriation of company funds, money laundering, and evasion of US sanctions against Russia, according to court records from March. Youssef subsequently indicated in a blog post that there would be “key staff departures” and blamed the U.S. regulatory climate as his reason for the stoppage.
The platform has been fairly silent on social media since the announcement, with Youssef claiming in April that he had made his “final act” as CEO in unfreezing 88% of certain users’ accounts — though he was still listed as CEO on the company’s website at the time of publication.
During the suspension, Youssef allegedly made contact with Block’s TBD section as part of his efforts to develop Civilization Kit, or Civ Kit, a peer-to-peer crypto trading platform. Civ Kit, according to its white paper, will be based on Nostr, a decentralized network that enables encrypted end-to-end private chat.
Paxful CEO Resigned After Break in Operations
Youssef stated shortly after Paxful’s suspension that he was working on refunding customers from his own pocket in order to avoid jail time. The exchange was able to unfreeze 88% of consumers’ accounts prior to the marketplace’s rebirth, leaving 3% frozen. On April 18, the Ray Youssef announced his retirement as the CEO.
