Less than a year after it began operating, Israeli digital currencies exchange DX.Exchange is halting its activity, after encountering financial difficulties. The company, which operates from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, published a notice to its customers on its blog yesterday saying that its board of directors had decided to close the exchange temporarily.
"As of today, we are not allowing any more deposits on the exchange and trading will be suspended. All open orders will be cancelled at 12:00 GMT today. All secondary loan trading will be closed at the last traded price at 12:00 GMT," the announcement stated. According to the announcement, the company wants to find a merger or an outright buyer for the exchange, and is offering to sell the brand, its customer database, and its technology. The announcement makes it clear that if no acquisition deal takes place, the temporary closing down of the exchange will become permanent.
According to the company, the main reason for closing down the exchange is the financial difficulties in operating it. "The costs of providing the required level of security, support and technology is not economically feasible on our own," DX.Exchange said in its announcement. Crypto market sources told "Globes" that because of its financial difficulties, DX.Exchange had laid off dozens of employees. The company, however, did not respond to a question from "Globes" about the matter.
DX.Exchange was founded in mid-2018 and launched its activity in January 2019. It offered trading in crypto currencies and digital tokenized versions of Nasdaq-listed US stocks, such as Apple and Tesla, and Wall Street-listed exchange traded funds (ETFs). DX.Exchange boasted of being the only crypto exchange in the world to base its activity on Nasdaq's technological infrastructure. According to DX.Exchange, this infrastructure made it much safer than other digital currencies trading platforms.
Early this year, DX.Exchange also announced cooperative ventures with several crypto currency commerce companies, among them Algoz and NFX. DX.Exchange founding partner and CEO Daniel Skowronski said, "We intend to become a leading company in crypto currencies trading, and we therefore have to make sure that our customers receive the best liquidity solutions."
A report published early this year on the CCN European news website stated that DX.Exchange was owned by Limor Patarkazishvili, an Israeli. According to that report, Patarkazishvili and her husband, Pini Peter, were formerly the owners of SpotOption, which provided software services for binary options trading platforms. The FBI investigated SpotOption in early 2018, and its investigators came to the company's offices in Ramat Gan and gathered documents there as part of the FBI investigation against Lee Elbaz, who was accused in the US of committing fraud through Yukom's trading platforms, which she managed. Last August, Elbaz was convicted in the US of being responsible for fraud amounting to $145 million.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 4, 2019
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