Two cryptocurrency exchanges closed within 48 hours!

     The virtual currency industry has been hit hard, with two cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitstake and Yacuna, announcing their closure in the past two days.

     In its final press release, Yacuna said that while Bitcoin remains a fantastic technology and they are proud to be one of the first European cryptocurrency exchanges, they had to shut down their business.

     Cryptocurrency exchange Yacuna will be shutting down its operations on November 15, 2015, and is asking users to check their account balances and withdraw all funds before November 15, 2015.

     The exchange also said that they will manually batch the withdrawals of all the currencies, but this may take some time.

     Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Bitstake also announced that it terminated its trading process 10 months ago.

     When users try to access Bitstake’s website, Bitstake.co, they are first greeted with a pop-up box telling the reader the sad news in the following words: “We are deeply sorry, but the Bitstake.co platform will be shutting down soon. Please withdraw your funds.”

     Bitstake’s financial services business, including P2P lending, SMS wallets and trading services, was developed on the back of the bitcoin blockchain technology. The sudden decision to shut down the cryptocurrency exchange was attributed to the company’s change of direction.

     In a press release sent to the media, the company solemnly announced that they are working hard to learn from their mistakes and have asked their users to withdraw their Bitcoin balances by October 30, 2015.

     For those who still need to trade Bitcoin, the company recommends NairaEx, which offers a 1,000 naira registration loan to new Nigerian users.

     The closure of these two exchanges is indeed a sad event, especially now that blockchain technology is working well with big banks such as Swiss banking giant UBS and financial institutions such as Barclays that have invested heavily in this field.