Blockport, a Netherlands-based Exchange, Goes Bankrupt
Not everybody in the crypto industry can achieve success, sadly. There are, as it happens in other fields, winners and losers in the everyday interactions that give life to this fascinating world. And, unfortunately, a Dutch crypto exchange was on the losing end this week.
It was reported that Blockport, a Netherlands-based cryptocurrency exchange, has to say goodbye to the industry because of a lack of operating capital. The platform was forced to close its doors, but they claim that they will eventually return.
The Next Web, a specialized news site, was the one that reported that the Blockport cryptocurrency exchange went bankrupt after a failed STO (Security Token Offering.) Blockport BV, which is the official operating entity, was declared as such in an Amsterdam court in recent days.
A Failed STO
The company itself wrote a blog post explaining the situation. In the piece, Sebastiaan Lichter (Blockport’s co-founder and chief product officer) observed that after the failed STO (one that failed to reach its $1.12 million soft cap,) they have decided to drastically scale down their operations and development.
“Though very unfortunate, after one month of running our STO we did not reach the threshold amount of 1M Euro that we set as a softcap. All investors that participated in the STO will therefore receive their investment amount worth of Euro back, and the issuance of BPS tokens will not take place,” the company announced.
“Since our first equity fundraising (STO) round was unsuccessful, we can’t uphold our planned growth trajectory and therefore have to significantly scale down our operations and team,” Lichter said.
In the same line of thought, the executive wrote that “running our operations and platform as-is without a substantial investment is currently not an economically viable and responsible option.”
As per the terms of the STO, investors were offered “more than just tokens,” including a share in the company’s profits, in exchange for a minimum of €500 investment.
The crypto exchange is now unable to create enough revenues to keep performing its operations, and as a result, Lichter states that the team will shift its focus to “expanding the platform with unique and value-adding technological features, that strengthen our business case for a potential future restart.”
Plans to Come Back Stronger
Yes, the company expressed its plans to, eventually; resume providing its services after efforts to prepare a restart were announced. “We still see a lot of opportunities in this industry and have built a top performing trading platform that many people love to use and which has had almost zero downtime or issues since we launched it in the summer of 2018.”
“We are already in touch with several parties that have shown interest in supporting a restart of Blockport in the future. However, the form or business structure is still unknown and subject to ongoing negotiations,” according to the blog post.
Users of the platform were notified in advance to remove any remaining funds they had before the shutdown. Additionally, the post stated that they still could withdraw by emailing the support department.
By Andres Chavez