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BlockFills, a crypto trading platform, will temporarily ban customers from depositing and withdrawing funds. It’s the latest sign of trouble for the digital assets industry, which has been plagued by falling prices and worries about the future. Chicago-based BlockFills announced the decision of a statement on Wednesday, saying it was done to further protect clients and the company.
A spokesperson for BlockFills declined to provide any further comment on the matter, in a note to luck.
BlockFills made the move in large part due to the current slump in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has fallen nearly 48% since its October high to its current price of about $66,000 and is down nearly 29% in the past month, according to Binance.
BlockFills primarily operates as a crypto lending platform for hedge funds and other asset managers. This means that the company uses crypto as collateral and provides liquidity to these borrowers. BlockFills has more than $60 billion in transaction value and has more than 2,000 institutional clients, according to its website.
The move of BlockFills echoes the activity during the crypto winter of 2022, when many famous lenders such as Celsius and BlockFi also stop customer deposits. The company, however, is not well known and it is unclear whether its troubles will affect the wider market.
Many think that the second term of President Donald Trump will usher in a golden era for cryptocurrencies. The first nine months of his presidency brought Bitcoin to its peak price, but the decline has been sharp since then, erasing all those early gains and more. Trump signed crypto-friendly legislation in July and is expected to sign another landmark bill in January until it stopped.
Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency to sputter. Ethereum has dropped 40% in the past month to its current price of about $1,919, and the Solana has dropped 45% in that time to its current price of about $78.
