Juno Advises Customers to Withdraw Their Funds

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• Crypto platform Juno has advised users to take their holdings off its platform
• The company is worried about the viability of its crypto custody partner
• Juno has liquidated stablecoin holdings into USD and transferred it to users’ bank accounts

Crypto platform Juno has taken the unusual step of advising customers to withdraw their assets from its platform citing “uncertainty” over its custody partner. The exchangewhich aims to be “the easiest and fastest on and off-ramp for crypto”, posted a tweet thread in which it stated that it is having issues with the company which custodies users’ crypto, and suggests removing it while it can resolve the issue. Juno advised its users on Wednesday and has so far offered no updates.

Juno Has Serious Concerns Over Custody Partner

Juno is a U.S.-based crypto on and off-ramp which launched in late 2019. It acts as a facilitator of crypto purchase and sales, and also offers interest-yielding accounts to U.S. citizens. Like other platforms, including Gemini, Juno doesn’t custody user funds for its interest accounts, entrusting them instead to a third-party.

However, it seems that something has happened with this third party to cause Juno to advise users to get their funds off its platform:

2/ Juno as a platform doesn’t custody crypto assets & relies on our crypto partner for these services.

Due to uncertainty with our crypto partner, we have taken preemptive action in the interest of our customers.

— Juno (@JunoFinanceHQ) January 4, 2023

Stablecoins Automatically Converted to USD

In the tweet thread, Juno said that has temporarily disabled crypto buys on its platform and has auto-converted the stablecoins it supports to USD and sent it to their registered bank accounts. It also strongly recommended that anyone holding crypto on the platform either withdraw it to a self-custody wallet or sell it for cash and withdraw that cash to their bank accounts.

Juno didn’t go into any details as to what the issue is with the custodian, but the issue must be a pretty big one for it to take a PR hit like this. Of course, taking this kind of a hit is far more preferable to not saying anything (see Celsius), but it’s clear that Juno suspects that something serious is afoot.