ICE3X, one of the first and oldest crypto exchanges in South Africa and across Africa which was founded in the year 2013 with roughly 80,000 clients ceased operations permanently due to low liquidity.
Earlier this year, ICE3X announced that they noticed some discrepancies in the balances pertaining to Bitcoin and Litecoin held on the platform on March 16. After several consultations and deliberations with their partner Merkeleon.com and subsidiary Coinspaid.com, no satisfactory conclusion was reached.
But on the advice of their auditing and legal team, ICE3X suspended deposits and trading of cryptocurrencies on their platform. In addition, Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) withdrawals were also suspended pending the outcome of a full investigation and reconciliation.
ICE3X said that clients holding cryptocurrencies on their platform excluding Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) will be able to withdraw their funds. They further said that this was done in protection of their clients.
On March 23, withdrawals from ICE3X platform by clients were totally disabled, and it was announced that withdrawals would now be done manually – clients would have to submit their withdrawals request via a Google Form.
The homepage URL of ICE3X which is ice3.com. Users will now be redirected to https://ice3x.co.za/status-update/ with no withdrawals support for Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) yet, but clients were advised to place their withdrawals request for both.
On April 6, according to the website of 1CE3X, the South African Crypto Exchange will not be returning back to operations and advised to start their liquidation proceedings. Also, there are no longer withdrawal requests pending for any currencies except Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC).
At the point of writing this article, the latest update from ICE3X, shows that all withdrawal requests submitted up to April 6 have been rectified and all the remaining assets either cryptocurrencies or fiat are held in trust by Manong Badenhorst & Badenhorst Attorneys. Also, liquidation proceedings have been initiated and clients are advised to download the requisition form, which should be sent as a mail to avj@natliq.co.za.
Recently, Binance announced that ZAR trading pairs was delisted from their platform, according to the official Twitter handle of Binance Africa on March 31. It was recommended that users either trade out of their ZAR positions or withdraw all their ZAR balances before April 2, 10:00 AM (UTC). The affected trading pairs are USDT/ZAR, BTC/ZAR, ETH/ZAR, BUSD/ZAR, BNB/ZAR.
