Indian Cryptocurrency exchange Zebpay which is one of the biggest crypto exchange today announces that they are going to stop their exchange. It was launched in 2015 with an app-only service and soon it becomes the most downloaded Bitcoin wallet in India.
In an announcement, Zebpay stated that “We are stopping our exchange. At 4 PM today, we will cancel unexecuted orders & credit your coins to your Zebpay wallet. No new orders will be accepted. The Zebpay wallet will work even after the exchange stops.”
“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. 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.”
Rahul Raj, the Founder, and CEO of Koinex crypto exchange said in a telephonic conversation with Koinalert:
Basically, this was a surprise to us also because we didn’t expect that some kind of news like will come out from Zebpay. So, I was on the panel with Ajeet at International Blockchain Congress at Hyderabad where he said that Zebpay has no intention of setting up a P2P platform or enabling P2P transaction on the platform and then later on Zebpay announced that are pushing out all their user funds so, that happened and then suddenly this came out today that was a little bit of surprise for us also.
We didn’t expect Zebpay will shut down the business in this way and with a short notice but at Koinex we continue to do business as usual and we welcome all the believers of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and we are continuing to make room for all users who want to migrate from Zebpay to Koinex.
Koinalert asked Rahul, Does this indicate that RBI is going to completely ban cryptocurrencies in India.
He replied “This is a very wild speculation, to be honest because now that the matter is being heard in the Supreme Court, nobody will be able to make a judgment other than the Supreme Court to the people will just have to wait to hear what Supreme Court says on this matter and depending on what the supreme court’s verdict is there will be some of the other kind of sentiment or movement in the regulatory framework, the regulators or the exchanges or the users will find themselves in situations with much more clarity on how this space is going to look like in the next few weeks or months, but before that any kind of speculation around that is actually a speculation only and we should rather wait for Supreme court with their own verdict and only then make any kind of assumptions and then only after that we are going to have some kind of concrete sense.
Nischal Shetty, the Founder, and CEO of WazirX exchange said in a statement to Koinalert:
“While Zebpay has been a competitor, it’s unfortunate to see they’re shutting down their exchange. The crypto community needs to stay strong & stick together. We need to keep the crypto fire burning in India. All Zebpay users are welcome to continue trading on WazirX.
The crypto landscape in India is adapting and shifting today. The first breed of exchanges saw growth because they were the first to market. The second generation of Indian exchange that WazirX represents is driven by technological and product innovation. For example, when the RBI ban kicked in, WazirX was the first in India to launch WazirX P2P as a solution and because of that, there’s been a rapid rise in the trading volumes of WazirX.
At this point, the crypto community needs to stick together. WazirX will continue in its mission to involve every Indian in the blockchain revolution. We are seeing rapid growth and we’ll continue to innovate and provide the right tools for Indian crypto traders.”
Mr. Kunal Barchha, Co-founder & Director, CoinRecoil exchange said in a statement to Koinalert:
“It’s a good and bad news for us. Good because we have one less competitor. Bad because it shows how intense the environment for Crypto business is in India. There are huge opportunities in this market but in the end, it all depends on getting a basic business environment; in this case, banking. We really hope the dark clouds are settled soon and everyone can get back to business.”