India’s largest crypto exchange Zebpay has its day
Zebpay has announced that it is shutting down all its cryptocurrency exchange business.
Its Zeb IT Service had allowed Indians throughout the country to get started with Bitcoin trading.
RBI takes control
However, as reported in April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) told all regulated organisations in the country that they can no longer deal with virtual currencies.
In a statement, the RBI said these kinds of currencies “raise concerns of consumer protection, market integrity and money laundering” and “in view of the associated risks, it has been decided that, with immediate effect, entities regulated by the RBI shall not deal with or provide services to any individual or business entities dealing with or settling virtual currencies”.
Zebpay admits having experienced regulatory and banking problems since its inception, and since it has kept fighting to bypass them as it “did not want India to miss the bus of digital assets that power the public blockchain”.
However, the recent past has been extremely difficult, as the firm states.
“The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customers’, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business,” it says in a statement.
The firm will cancel all unexecuted crypto-to-crypto orders and credit tokens back to customers’ Zebpay wallet. No new orders will be accepted until further notice.
The Zebpay wallet will continue to work even after the exchange stops. Users are free to deposit and withdraw tokens into their wallets.
