Canada was one of the first nations in the Western world to begin to show great interest in Bitcoin, allowing users to freely operate Bitcoin venues and develop infrastructure at the very early stages of the development of virtual currency, leading to a degree of popularity in the Northern Dominion.
The stability of Canada’s business environment and highly ethical ecosystem is clearly not enough to prevent the disappearance of some of the nation’s Bitcoin industry participants, as CAVIRTEX (an acronym for Canadian Virtual Exchange) prepares to close down.
The exchange, which caters or Litecoin and Bitcoin, is due to cease operations on March 25, according to a post on the company’s blog yesterday.
Which reads “CAVIRTEX will be shutting down on March 25th. All funds will be returned to users. For more info please go to https://cavirtex.com/news”
One day prior to that announcement, the firm announced that “BTC and LTC deposits & withdrawals are temporarily disabled while we investigate suspicious activity. All client funds are safe and secure.”
Indeed, this indicated that the company had concerns over security, a matter which has been instrumental to the success of Bitcoin and in establishing its future as a viable method of electronic payment, following the several thefts from Bitcoin exchanges which range from last year’s demise of MtGox, to this week’s hacking of the secure wallet system of BTER Exchange, resulting in losses to client deposits totaling $1.75 million.
The full circle that Bitcoin has made since the days of MtGox’s demise which left investors high and dry has largely been bolstered by the rapid and highly advanced development of security technology, which has driven the industry forward and attracted the attention of global regulators as well as large venture capital investors which have been backing Bitcoin enterprises, often with large investments.
As CAVIRTEX prepares to shuffle off the virtual coil, it is clear that, whilst advancements in the areas of security have been tremendous in such a short space of time, infallibility is still a distant aim.
To view the notices on the CAVIRTEX website, click here.