In what could be termed as a major setback for the virtual currency industry, two cryptocurrency exchanges, namely Bitstake and Yacuna, have pulled down their shutters in the last two days.
In its last press note, Yacuna said that while Bitcoin remained a wonderful technology and that they were proud to be one of the first European exchanges for cryptocurrency yet, they have to shut down their operations.
Cryptocurrency exchange Yacuna will close their operations on November 15th, 2015 and has requested consumers to check on their account balance and withdraw any amount before November 15th, 2015.
The exchange also said that it will manually batch and process withdrawals of all currencies, but it also added that this may take some time.
Meanwhile, Nigeria-based Bitstake has also announced that it is terminating its journey that began 10 months ago.
When a user tries to access the Bitstake website, Bitstake.co, then the first pop-up message informs the reader of the sad tidings in these words: “We apologize, but the Bitstake.co platform will shutdown soon. Please withdraw your coins.”
Bitstake began its operations with developing financial services powered by the Bitcoin blockchain with P2P lending, SMS wallet, and the exchange services. The cryptocurrency exchange’s sudden shutdown decision has been credited to the changes in company’s direction.
In the press note issued to the media, the company vowed that it is trying to learn from its mistakes and has asked its users to withdraw their Bitcoin balance by 30th October 2015.
For those who still need to trade in Bitcoin, the company has recommended NairaEx stating that there’s 1,000 Naira signup credit for new Nigerian users.
The shutdown of the operations of these two exchanges is a sad development particularly because the blockchain technology is doing very well now with big banks like Swiss giant UBS, and financial institutions like Barclays investing heavily in this field.