Two Indian Cryptocurrency Exchanges Are Shutting Down-What Does It Mean?
Two Indian cryptocurrency exchanges are shutting down their operations. BTCXIndia and ETHEXIndia from the 5th of March 2018 onwards will stop all trading activities on their platform. They are shutting down citing government issues but the fact is that it’s probably due to their inability to keep up with other top exchanges in the country.
If you are signed up with either of these two aforementioned exchanges please withdraw your holdings immediately. The Indian Finance Minister’s speech created a lot of FUD in India. However, Indian government hasn’t banned cryptocurrencies and there’s no need to panic.
These two cryptocurrency exchanges never had the kind of volume other top exchanges in India have. However, if you are interested in reading their official letter then here it goes as reported by ET.
This is a copy of the email message sent by BTCXIndia to its userbase:
It's been 4 years since we opened BTCXIndia, and 2 years since we opened ETHEXIndia. We have served 35000+ customers during the years and have witnessed the BTC price go up 50x and the ETH price go up 100x. We have kept your crypto safe, and allowed you to trade against others on equal terms, in a safe environment, while adhering to KYC & AML and other tax compliance requirements.
As we heard in the budget speech, the Indian government is discouraging crypto currency trading.This has been clear also by government actions in the last year, and has put our business under a lot of stress and putting us in a position where we don't feel that we can continue our business in a professional manner any longer.
Until new rules are in place for tokens on public blockchains, we are halting our trading ( XRP/INR pair) platform and will focus 100% on our consultancy working with permissioned blockchains. All trading activity will be halted as of March 5th 2018. Please withdraw all assets from your account before then.
The consultancy business started in April 2017, and have so far developed client registry platforms, automated escrow management and payment solutions for a number of clients in the financial, health and agriculture sectors. We are launching full fledged blockchain labs http://schainlabs.com/ on March 09, 2018 for Blockchain based application development and consultancy.
We hope that this work will help the government seeing the huge benefits that India can derive from blockchain technologies, and eventually promote progressive and clear regulation also for the public blockchain space.
I've said this time and again, there's no need to panic if you are an Indian cryptocurrency user. The government isn't going to ban cryptocurrencies but hopefully they will regulate the market and make it easier and safer for everyone to operate.
The government in recent times have sent tax notices to HNWIs, arm twisted banks into making it harder for these exchanges to operate. Finance Minister said that they are not legal tender but there is absolutely no issues with trading them as the government never declared they were banning cryptocurrencies.
If you are a user of these two exchanges you can move to other exchanges such as Coinome, Coinsecure, Koinex or any other Indian exchange. In recent times I've been using Coinome and Coinsecure.
Indian thirst for cryptocurrencies continues to grow as more citizens from my country are learning about speculating in digital currencies. It would be interesting to see how things go on from here.
Other big exchanges in India are adding new alt-coins to their list of trading pairs provided. Overall things look very positive for 2018. Let's hope it goes that way!
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Sad these exchanges are shutting down. The thing about cryto is, just a few negative words on the news and fud everywhere. Am glad the level at which people react to fud these days are decreasing gradually. As many have come to learn that crypto is here to stay.
I have seen ZebPay and Unocoin are now adding more and more coins, so as you said, its going to be positive overall. Many people misinterpret the finance ministers announcement , so still some education need to be built up.
We need dem decentralized exchanges more than ever!
Indian Finance Ministry created FUD and market went down. When STEEM gets listed on any Indian exchange, it will go huge! Waiting eagerly for that day to happen. :-)
When Indians put their feet in or out of something, it affects the world.
Well this is bad news for those who have their holdings with those two exchanges but reassuring for crypto enthusiast in India.
It is quite unfortunate the the FUD got to them this much as to make them shut down operations. But like they said, hopefully they will return when things have returned to normalcy .
Tomorrow is 5th of match though ...isn't this news coming rather late?
They can still withdraw. So there's no problem there. :)
Hi,
Please check your steem.chat message. Your track is ready. Cheers!!!
Yeah that's right.. they are shutting down because of their inability to keep up with other top exchanges in the country. Not because of the government.. The government made it's stand clear on the cryptocurrency market in India; quoted from the post you @firepower created sometime back where the prime minister gave a brief over view of how the government was in support cryptocurrency and blockchain.
It's hard to operate an exchange when you don't have the financial power to maintain the massive exchanges people have. This I support you here; people should withdraw their holdings to avoid any future regrets. I've witnessed people losing lots of money in such scenarios, when an exchange closes.. And they end up not getting compensated even though the law suits are filed against these firms. Am not sure of the other exchanges, but I've done my research on Coinome as I've witnessed some Indian friends using it. I feel it's reputable enough for the Indian nationals to go for without any insecurities.
Let's hope those who did not get this info on time will still be allowed access to the withdrawal of their stakes....
On the issue of government banning crypt trading, I think I read in the news few weeks ago how the Indian finance minister reiterated the government's renewed effort to ban crypto in india (I am not an Indian anyway, but I follow the news very well.)
Sincerely you have done well by reassuring everyone in India that there is nothing to worry about. Your post sincerely deserves what it is currently earning and more. I have also upvoted and followed you.
How can government ban crypto?
If government can ban their own currency(demonetization), they can indeed do any crazy thing as they wish :)
haha i couldn't move without liking and commenting on your comment. Our Govt is quite capable of insane things.
How can you ban what is not yours?
You cannot ban what is NOT there. Cryptocurrencies are neither here or there because it is on many computers in many countries and therefore in international territories, legally speaking, and they would have to go to the United Nations or the New World Order or other entities perhaps if they wanted to go after Bitcoin for example because Bitcoin is neither yours or mine but is rather an asset that you can connect to but you cannot remove Bitcoin from the blockchain which is not in the domain or the control of government and Bitcoin is not a dollar and it works differently.
Government has to steal your computer in order to get the passwords and pass phrases to get access into Bitcoin that is not really yours to begin with. You gain access to borrow and rent or to use Bitcoin but Bitcoin is not a physical thing that is centralized which means you cannot stop it without burning up all the computers in the world. if you want to ban Bitcoin, you have to blow up the whole world.
Thanks for sharing this information
@firepower you delivered the information so well thank you very much