Another one bites the dust. Koinex, once the largest crypto exchange in India, shut its doors today. Of course Koinex is sitting on a cash pile from investors and with a staff of over 60 people won’t just stop the business altogether, but we will come to that later.
Koinex users have until July 15 09:00 PM to withdraw their crypto from the exchange. The INR balances on Koinex will be disbursed by the exchange to its users in the next five weeks as per the latest announcement.
The exchange cited multiple reasons for the inevitable step, it ranged from RBI’s decision to stop the banking support to the latest article from BloombergQuint on Cryptocurrency ban in India. Koinex’s CEO Rahul Raj in the announcement said, “We’re not too hopeful that things will change for the better in the near future.”
The future of crypto assets in India may seem a tad bit dark but we individual investors can keep on hoping. Unfortunately, the burden of being a corporate takes the toll eventually and the same goes with all the priors exits in the market – Zebpay, CoinDelta, Coinome and many other smaller exchanges.
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What Next For Koinex?
When Zebpay Shut down, it wanted to go global. When CoinDelta shut down, there was no clear direction on where they are going from there. Lastly when Coinome shut down, we know that the parent company BillDesk, one of India’s largest payment processor can write it off.
But what about Koinex? What if I tell you that Koinex is going to focus on building Blockchain Products? It is evident from the fact that Koinex has invested a significant amount of money in building a development centre in the silicon valley of India -Bengaluru.
Better yet, remember Pulse? A browser extension for EOS Blockchain built by a team at Koinex. It is open source, but who knows what project X is being cooked up inside the DC at Bengaluru or the HQ at Mumbai?
One of the reasons cited on the announcement is the struggle in processing payments for rent of offices or employee salaries. Dissociating from Crypto and focusing on Blockchain products could resolve that issue for Koinex.
Speculations are rife as traders around the country are saying they didn’t expect Koinex to shut down. Some are even claiming that the company may move abroad and just keep the development center in India much like many other blockchain companies including Matic or Marlin.
When I asked someone at Koinex about what their next plan is, I got a simple “We will keep you posted” reply from them.
Where will Koinex Users Go?
While the Koinex fraternity is big a lot of seasoned traders had moved out of the exchange given the handicapped system of depositing INR to the exchange.
But, Koinex fraternity is huge and looking at how the markets have dumped on the exchange after the announcement, it seems the users are also quite unaware of other exchanges or wallets where they can transfer their funds.
Other Exchanges are wooing Koinex Users
Several exchanges in India have already started wooing Koinex users by exciting offers. From getting a refund on withdrawal fees to upto 2% extra cashback, the offers are lucrative enough to attract a wide variety of users.
Bitbns – Withdrawal Fee Refund
Bitbns exchange has maintained its tradition to refund fees for users who transfer their crypto from the exchange that is shutting down to Bitbns. There are some conditions associated with it as well to get the fees refunded like holding the transferred crypto for 10 days or trade it and posting a screenshot of the transfer on social media.
More details can be found at Bitbns exchange.
CoinDCX – 2% Deposit Bonus
CoinDCX exchange has found a novel way to attract Koinex users. For each deposit made from Koinex to CoinDCX, users can get upto 2% extra on it. Users need to share the screenshot of the withdrawal on social media with #DontWorryIndia hashtag.
1% cashback will be deposited on July 1 and the other 1% will be deposited if the user holds the funds for 30 days. The upper limit to this 1% cashback is INR 1000.
More details can be found at CoinDCX Exchange
WazirX – 1% Deposit Bonus
WazirX exchange has also maintained tradition with granted a 1% deposit bonus to Koinex users for transferring their funds to WazirX. If the user holds the crypto for 30 days on WazirX, the exchange will credit 1% deposit bonus.
More details can be found at WazirX Exchange
Other Indian exchanges
There are multiple other exchanges that offer BUY and SELL services from crypto assets using INR like Instashift, Giottus, ETHX.co and Pokcetbits which you can check out.
Foreign Exchanges
There are more exchanges that can be used like Binance, Okex, Bittrex, Kucoin, Gate.io etc which are not based in India but have good liquidity for trading crypto assets. Most of these exchanges do not offer fiat services, these are only crypto-to-crypto exchanges.
Or you can just simply transfer funds to a personal wallet. It is the safest option to store your crypto for a long time.
Transfer Funds to Personal Wallets for long term
If you’re not a big trader but just like to hold your crypto assets for a longer time, it is better to transfer these funds to a private wallet. There are several online and offline wallets that can be used.
Wallets like Trust Wallet, Coinomi Wallet are great to store crypto assets in your mobile. Do not forget to back it up though.
At the same time, hardware wallets like Ledger or Trezor are the most secure wallets to store crypto assets.
Online wallets like MyCrypto, MyEtherWallet, Blockchain.info wallets are safe for storing your cryptocurrencies as well.
Don’t Panic
The most important message that we at Coin Crunch or rather any other Crypto enthusiast and exchange owners want to spread is to not panic.
Almost always the decision to shut down is more strategic than emotional. It may hurt the traders in short term, but usually it is a decision to step back and pounce again when the time is right.
So Discidium Internet Labs Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of Koinex will likely keep on developing and bringing innovation to the Indian community. For trading cryptocurrencies, just use any other exchanges.
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