Romania's Oldest Bitcoin Exchange Is Shutting Down Next Week

Romania's BTCxChange announced it was closing its platform earlier this week.

In a notice dated April 22, the nation's oldest cryptocurrency exchange told its customers to withdraw all of their remaining funds from the platform, which had already suspended most of its operations – including the ability to trade between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies like the Romanian leu – earlier this year.

The notice said:

"We inform you that starting from 1st of May 2018, our platform will be closed. Operations stopped back on 1st of February but you still could stock your bitcoins on our platform."

Earlier this year, the exchange's chief executive, Max Nicula, said the startup's bank accounts had been shut down, and it would no longer able able to process fiat trades, Cryptoninjas reported.

This marks the third time the exchange has said that it would close. In September 2016, the company announced it would possibly be sold, and prepared for a closure at the time. At the time, the startup's owner, Horea Vuscan, said he wanted to retire, and placed the exchange up for sale, as previously reported.

Before then, the exchange asked its users to withdraw all their funds after its team lost access to their servers in September 2014, less than a year after it first opened.

Romanian leu and bitcoin image via Shutterstock