CryptoBridge closes leaving users little time to extract funds

Decentralized crypto exchange CryptoBridge today announced it will close down services on December 16. The exchange cites “market conditions, increasing regulation, [and an] inability to fund further development and maintain operations” as reasons for closing.

Deposits will close 23:59 GMT December 3, before the termination of all services at 23:59 GMT on December 15. If you miss the deadline, your crypto will be lost forever. Users appear to have got the message. In the past 24 hours, the exchange traded around 11.8 Bitcoin ($85,994). 

The US-based exchange, founded in 2017, was built on the Bitshares platform and on the ultrafast Graphene blockchain. On top of charging fees for using the exchange, CryptoBridge was offering “Personalized asset listing,” a service whereby companies behind fledgling cryptocurrencies could pay a nominal fee, starting from 0.35 Bitcoin, to have the exchange promote the coin for them.  

But to little avail: of 126 coins listed on the exchange, per data metrics site CoinMarketCap.com, few were popular. In fact, 26 percent of all volume came from the coin Soverain currently ranked 1,281 by market cap, and 12 percent came from the exchange’s native token, BridgeCoin (ranked 1,303).

CryptoBridge going dark comes shortly after last week’s news that the CEO of crypto-exchange IDAX went missing, taking millions of dollars worth of funds with him. “IDAX Global CEO have gone missing with unknown cause and IDAX Global staffs [sic] were out of touch with IDAX Global CEO,” posted an IDAX team. In response, IDAX restricted access to cold wallets, freezing withdrawal and deposit services.