by John Smith Gatecoin Crypto Exchange shuts down!
The Gatecoin cryptocurrency exchange is dead and will go into liquidation after losing 2 million Dollars in cryptocurrencies.
Gatecoin was one of the first regulated exchanges to appear.
Launched in Hong Kong in 2013, it focused entirely on Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum-based tokens markets.
According to the message, signed by the “Gatecoin’s team,” payment service issues would have “crippled” the platform’s operations for months and generated “substantial losses” that could not be recovered.
“On March 13, 2019, the court issued an order against our company. A provisional liquidation has been designated and we must cease operations immediately.
Rest assured that we will assist you in the liquidation process to realize the realization and redistribution of our assets to your creditors.”
The whole Gatecoin statement on their website:
“Dear users,
As you may know, following our issues with our banking partners in September last year, we started working with a Payment Service Provider (“PSP”) which is a fully regulated payment institution by the French regulator. However, that PSP failed to process most of the transfers in a timely manner which in turn almost paralyzed our operation for many months and caused substantial loss on our side.
Even after we managed to mitigate our loss by replacing that PSP with more reliable alternatives to process our clients’ transfers in September 2018, the situation did not improve because that PSP retained a large part of our funds. After months spent trying to recover those funds, we commenced legal action against that PSP but were advised that it is unlikely that we would be able to recover the funds from them in full.
In light of the circumstances, we have suffered financial difficulty over a period time to an extent that we are no longer able to support our operation. On 13 March 2019, the court has granted a winding-up order against our company. A provisional liquidator has been appointed and we have to cease operation with immediate effect. Please rest assured that we will assist the liquidation process in order to expedite the realization and redistribution of our assets to the creditors.
Once again, we thank you for your support over the years and apologize for the inconvenience that may cause.
Sincerely,
The Gatecoin Team”
The decline has never stopped for Gatecoin.
Gatecoin hack (still unresolved) three years ago, in which they lost 185,000 ETH ($24.2 million) and 250 BTC ($960,000) stolen from the startup’s crypto wallets owned by their customers, sealed their fate.
At the time, the combination of these crypto-currencies was worth only $2 million, but at the highest point of their values, only Ethereum was worth more than $203 million.
In January of last year, their cryptocurrency transfers were around $17 million a day, but their volume had dropped significantly in the following months.
If you had some crypto funds at Gatecoin, contact them to see how you can get them back.
In this way, another activity related to cryptocurrencies ends.
Crypto exchanges have learned lessons from platform failures such as Gatecoin and store user funds in cold wallets, making it impossible for hackers to access them.
Despite this, recent hacks such as Cryptopia still raise questions about the internal management of funds for some cryptos exchanges.
Best crypto advice, if you do not need to trade them, do not leave your coins on a crypto exchange, hacking is always possible or an inside exit scam, who knows…
Store your cryptocurrencies on an external crypto wallet like the Ledger Nano X for example.
