Dubai Bitcoin Exchange Halts Fiat Withdrawals Due to Bank ‘Issue’
Arabian Business quotes the statement as informing BitOasis users the following:
“If you decide to leave your fiat balances the only way for you to withdraw your funds at any time after May 15th would be to convert it to cryptocurrency and send it to an external wallet”
“If you choose to keep your AED fiat balances after May 15th, currently we do not have any date on when we will be reactivating AED fiat withdrawals, but we are hard at work to provide our customers with this service.”
There is no date as of yet for the reactivation of dirham withdrawals and deposits by wire transfer, although BitOasis have said it should be soon.
The exchange, which operates in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, has suspended withdrawals in the past as well, halting transfers to and from Emirates NBD, Noor Bank and Mashreq bank accounts in 2017 for a short time Gulf News reported that customers experienced delayed withdrawals while new verifications were also suspended and that the issue was due to regulatory pressure from within the UAE at the time.
Entrepreneur Ola Dudin of Jordan founded BitOasis in 2014 as a hybrid wallet/exchange, and the exchange has been active since then, listing Zcash as recently as April 23, 2018. According to the website , BitOasis plans to be the first digital assets company in MENA to be registered in a major technology center in the region.
The company has not yet updated the blog regarding the new constraints on the use of the dirham currency on the exchange. Many BitOasis users are concerned with the recent developments, and have taken to Twitter to voice complaints and seek answers to their questions on the timeline of the restrictions and whether they still have time to withdraw their money.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
