After two and a half years of activity decentralized exchange CryptoBridge is shutting down. The main reasons for this decision are market conditions, increasing regulation, and inability to fund the development and operations. The exchange announced that after December 15th all servers and services will be terminated.
The exchange already closed deposits. In addition users can withdraw their currencies from their private wallets until December 15 23:59 GMT. After that there's no way to reach the coins, as they are hidden behind in the exchange's system and only accessible with a private key.
CryptoBridge already closed on their social media account. The only support the exchange will be giving, is through the internal support system. In two weeks CryptoBridge will be shutting down access to its decentralized exchange for good.
CryptoBridge launched in the summer of 2017, right before the major bull market. The success of Ethereum, Bitcoin and Dash made everybody jump into crypto. CryptoBridge offered many tokens and coins, and on top of that didn't require any user information. Traders would generate an account with a private key, and could start trading immediately.
Over time CryptoBridge become a popular exchange for startups and scam artists. Many blockchain and crypto startups listed their project on the decentralized exchange, because the listing fee was relatively low. As a result trading on CryptoBridge was a high-risk operation. Scam projects like Drip, Giga, Condominium and others were very common.
When the crypto market dumped in early 2018, many bubbles popped. Scammers grabbed their money and ran. As a result CryptoBridge saw a dramatic decline in trading activity. On top of that the exchange suddenly required users to register their identity two months ago.
Despite their downfall and despite the many scams to flourished on their platform, CryptoBridge did show that decentralized exchanges can work. It's possible to build a financial product to which only users themselves have full access.
However, government regulations and technological innovation are still changing the way a decentralized exchange works. With a decentralized exchange users are in full control of their money and their login data. On top of that decentralized exchange are less likely to have to deal with network failures.
Financial institutions and exchanges can fail the citizen. For example banks close or deny citizens access to their money. In addition hackers break into centralized exchanges and banks can deny citizens access to their money if they please. Decentralized applications for consumers and business just have many benefits, and technology is definitely moving into that direction. Every device connected to the internet, is potentially contributing to a decentralized network, offering decentralized services. So, even though CryptoBridge is closing, its message will live on.
