One of South Africa’s oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, ICE3x, has issued a notice to the public that the company will cease operations.
The news was published on their platform yesterday evening, Tuesday 06 April, at 18h00 CAT. Global Crypto has continually reached out to ICE3x CEO, Gareth Grobler, throughout the exchange’s challenging period, but the executive was unable to provide comment. This applies too, to the current notice outlining that ICE3x is ceasing operations.
The only information Global Crypto has at this stage is that, based on the notice provided by the exchange and information from users, the company has been advised by its legal representatives to discontinue all services and close the exchange.
Global Crypto received an email from a distressed ICE3x user who claims to have lost over R150,000, in a stop loss gone wrong prior to the initial cessation of trading on 16 March 2021. The trader claims that when Bitcoin dropped in value, stop losses on his order did not execute at his desired trigger price, but instead executed far lower, leading some to speculate that the discrepancies spoken about in the initial 16 March 2021 announcement to be related to a lack of liquidity on the platform required to buy up stop orders of that nature.
The announcement stated that all withdrawals have now been disabled, and while today’s withdrawals submitted will be processed, there will be no further processing from tomorrow. This accompanies the news that the company’s legal counsel have advised to liquidate operations.
ICE3x was founded by CEO, Gareth Grobler, back in 2013, and is one of the continent’s longest standing exchanges. The company was registered in Klerksdorp as a homage to the country’s first stock exchange, that was created to facilitate trade surrounding the 1885 Gold Rush on the Witwatersrand.
Global Crypto has reached out to Grobler for up to date comment, with no communication received at time of publication. We will continue to update on this story as more information becomes available.
Other exchanges in South Africa have expressed sadness at the news, with the CEO of the country’s newest exchange VALR saying that “it is obviously very unfortunate to hear of the closure and liquidation of any crypto exchange. I personally am not aware of the details of what has happened, but I hope that a favourable resolution can be found for all parties involved.”
AltCoinTrader’s CEO Richard de Sousa stated that “we are extremely shocked and extremely sad that one of our competitors have befallen this fate. The recent events and subsequent closure of ICE3x are a tragedy to the industry.”
Luno declined to comment on the matter, while we wait for a comment from Binance South Africa’s head of business.
Herewith the entire announcement on the ICE3x website (SIC):
“We regret to inform you that the platform will not return to operation and that we have been advised to initiate liquidation proceedings.
All withdrawals from the platform have been disabled, and we have processed the withdrawals which have already been submitted via the form today, manually.
We currently have no withdrawal requests pending for any currencies other than BTC and LTC.
We will provide further details and next steps during the course of the day tomorrow (07/04/2021).
As always we can still be reached via help.ice3.com or email us help@ice3.com (please be conscious of the fact that staff are operating under extreme pressure at the moment, and can only provide assistance as directed. We understand your frustration but please be respectful when communicating with service desk staff).
Please do not create multiple tickets or make use of multiple channels to make contact as this only increases the workload and amount of tickets the team needs to go through, which delays the operations significantly.
Thank you for your support and patience
Kind regards
The iCE3 Service Desk Team”
