Indian Cryptocurrency Exchange Zebpay Puts The Shutter Down
One of India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges Zebpay announced to close its operations in an official blog post on Thursday, September 27. The cryptocurrency exchange said that the decision was majorly due to India’s central bank asking all regulated banking institutions to cut their ties with crypto exchanges, earlier this year in April.
Post this ban, Zebpay and all other cryptocurrency exchanges started facing severe liquidity crunch. Many of the cryptocurrency exchanges have now turned towards crypto-to-crypto trading. However, this has caused a severe hurdle for new entrants and investors to participate in the crypto market.
Back in 2015, Zebpay entered the cryptocurrency market as a trading platform with an app-only service initially. Soon the app gained traction and became very popular and became the country’s most downloaded exchange apps and Bitcoin wallet.
During the cryptocurrency bull run, Zebpay’s Android and iOS app combined hit more than 3 million downloads by October 2017. Both the applications provided a support of 20 cryptocurrencies with more than 22 trading pairs. To keep in line with the regulatory requirements, Zebpay also brought the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) model.
The company in its blog post wrote: "Lakhs of Indians took their first step into the world of Bitcoin using the Zebpay app. Your trust has been the pillar of our strength. Despite regulatory and banking problems along our journey, we continued to look for solutions as we did not want India to miss the bus of digital assets that power the public blockchain.”
It further added that “However, the recent past has been extremely difficult. The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customer’s, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business. As a result, we are stopping our exchange activities.”
Talking about the suspension of all its operations Zebpay noted: "At 4 p.m. today (28 September 2018), we will cancel all unexecuted crypto-to-crypto orders and credit your coins/tokens back to your Zebpay wallet. No new orders will be accepted until further notice.”
The digital trading platform further noted that the Zebpay wallet will continue to operate even after the exchange operations are closed. "You are free to deposit and withdraw coins/tokens into your wallet," it said.