Apparently, 2019 was not a rosy year for crypto exchanges: according to some data, about 20 exchanges have closed in the year which is drawing to an end.
January 2019
The first of the list is the small crypto exchange Liqui that, due to lack of liquidity, decided to close as it could not withstand the costs of the platform.
February 2019
This month, concerns began over Canada’s largest exchange, QuadrigaCX, which then developed into a reality with somewhat absurd dynamics.
The investigators have even suspected the death of the platform’s CEO.
The CoinPulse crypto exchange also closed in February 2019 and went into liquidation, with the hope that some investors would make an offer to buy the platform.
March 2019
During this period, Gatecoin, an exchange located in Hong Kong, announced its closure and liquidation due to some problems with local banks that had frozen their funds, probably due to money laundering issues.
April 2019
In Korea, the Coinnest exchange, one of the largest in the country, closed in April. The decision to close the trading platform was mainly dictated by pressure from the local regulator, which pushed the team to permanently close its service.
May 2019
On May 15th, the ill-fated Cryptopia exchange closed, which, following several hacks, was forced to terminate the service.
In the same month, the Indian exchange, Coinome, also ceased to exist, inviting users to withdraw their cryptocurrencies from their platform.
In this case, the closure of the platform was dictated by the very strict and unclear rules of the Indian government.
June 2019
In the case of Coinroom, there was a real exit scam as it closed all the channels and stole the clients’ funds. The exchange was centralised and the team did not inform users of its closure in any way.
July 2019
The story involving the closure of the Polish exchange BitMarket, whose co-founder was found dead and where the appeal would still be missing 2300 BTC, has police implications.
Another case was the scam of the Novachain exchange, which disappeared into thin air in a matter of days.
October 2019
In this list, there is also a decentralised exchange (DEX), Aphelion, which allowed the trading of cryptocurrencies based on the NEO blockchain. Here, too, the expenses were the determining cause for the closure.
Users did not lose any funds but, due to the delisting of tokens, these have lost a lot of value.
November 2019
In Canada, in November there was the forced closure of the crypto exchange Einstein, which was also possibly the result of an exit scam.
DXExchange is another one that had to close because of the exorbitant costs it could no longer sustain and so it invited users to withdraw their funds before the final closure.
Also in November, a ten-year exchange, Virwox, announced that it will pull the plug at the beginning of 2020.
Worth mentioning is also the IDAX exchange, which is certainly not in a good state of affairs and could soon close since the CEO has disappeared into thin air, with funds perhaps also at risk.
From these data, it is certainly possible to see how it is never wise to leave funds on centralised platforms since they could close or disappear overnight, and how it is preferable to use decentralised crypto platforms.
