The uncertainty surrounding the India market together with the government hard stand has led to another exchange closing down. Through a well-detailed blog post from Rahul Raj co-founder of Koinex, the crypto community in India has to learn of Koinex walking out of India.
Although Raj’s blog post in long, the co-founder took his time and effort to write the piece detailing every decision made and the reasons that lead to it closing down. Started in 2017, Koinex has had a good run, growing from being a startup to India’s largest and most promising exchange. From starting operations, Koinex only took four months to record a trading volume of $265M. Furthermore, the operations were so good that Koinex was getting more than 40K new traders in a day when the industry was at its peak in December 2017. However, all this is going down the drain due to the Indian government hard stand on crypto and the lack of relief.
Reasons that Lead to the Closure
Woes for the crypto community in India started in 2018 April 6th when India’s Reserve Bank issued a circular prohibiting financial institutions from servicing crypto related entities. The latter brought a lot of hardship when it came to carrying out day to day operations, but Koinixe soldiered on. However, while the community went to the Supreme Court and lodged their complaint, the back and forth in corridors of justice have led nowhere.
On the other hand, the effect of the circular was being felt by Koinex employees who had to answer questions from banks which handled their salaries every month. The latter was so hard for Koinex employees to the point that they couldn’t even pay their house rent due to having an associating with a crypto-based firm. Besides Koinex employees, service providers, together with vendors, were also affected due to the earlier circular. With business becoming too hard things become worse with the recent law whose aim is to imprison crypto trader’s up to 10 years.
Despite all the above, Koinex traders have until the 15th of July to withdraw their funds before everything comes to a standstill. Furthermore, orders placed will be canceled since Koinex already disabled platform operations as of 2.00 PM IST on June 27, 2019. For those who placed orders before the above time, all funds will be sent back to their accounts.
