Zebpay, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in India, today announced the closure of its activities. On 28 September 2018 Zebpay said that it will be shutting down its operations. This move comes five months after the RBI banned banks and registered financial institutions from providing any service to crypto exchanges. The Finance Ministry, earlier this year, had said that trading in Bitcoin and virtual currencies have no protection.
The company also said that it 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 crypto exchange, however, said its Zebpay wallet will continue to work even after the exchange stops. “You are free to deposit and withdraw coins/tokens into your wallet,” it said.
The crypto market hasn’t been doing well since this year, with prices ups and down. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business,” Zebpay said in a blog post.
With the Zebpay app, thousands of Indians took their first step into the world of Bitcoin. The company also state despite all the banking problem we continued to look for solutions as we did not want India to miss the bus of digital assets that power the public blockchain.
Also, the company added that recent situation has been extremely challenging. The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customer’s, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, the company is unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business.
After the RBI’s April-5 circular, Zebpay had disabled the rupee deposit and withdrawal options on its mobile app.
In a statement issued last year in December, the Finance Ministry said: “Virtual currencies are not backed by government fiat. These are also not legal tender. Hence, VCs are not currencies. These are also being described as ‘Coins’. There is, however, no physical attribute to these coins. Therefore, VC are neither currencies nor coins.”
Source: businesstoday.in