Indian cryptocurrency exchanges BTCXIndia and ETHEXIndia have announced their plans to halt cryptocurrency trading, The Economic Times reported.

In an email to its customers, BTCXIndia stated that it decided not to accept deposits with effect from January 1, 2018. Post this date, any deposits received would be reverted to the customer’s bank account automatically. Furthermore, those who signed up with BTCXIndia have been advised to withdraw their funds on or before March 4.

Launched in 2013, BTCXIndia supports Ripple’s XRP token and provides real-time trading of cryptocurrencies and Indian rupee (INR). Here are few excerpts from the BTCXIndia’s email:

“As we heard in the budget speech, the Indian government is discouraging crypto currency trading. This has been clear also by government actions in the last year, and has put our business under a lot of stress and putting us in a position where we don't feel that we can continue our business in a professional manner any longer.

“Until new rules are in place for tokens on public blockchains, we are halting our trading ( XRP/INR pair) platform and will focus 100% on our consultancy working with permissioned blockchains. All trading activity will be halted as of March 5th 2018. Please withdraw all assets from your account before then.”

In addition, BTCXIndia announced its plans to launch blockchain lab this month. It said:

“We are launching full-fledged blockchain labs http://schainlabs.com/ on March 09, 2018 for Blockchain based application development and consultancy. We hope that this work will help the government seeing the huge benefits that India can derive from blockchain technologies, and eventually promote progressive and clear regulation also for the public blockchain space.”

ETHEXIndia allows investors to trade in Ethereum (ETH). In a similar message to its users, ETHEXIndia website states:

“W.E.F. 1 January 2018, please do not make any INR or ETH deposits. Deposits received, if any, will be automatically reverted to the respective bank accounts.

Customers are advised to withdraw their funds(ETH and INR) on or before 28 February 2018, if not will attract an annual wallet maintenance fees.

ETH trading will be halted with effect from 01 March 2018.”