Venezuela’s Biggest Bitcoin Exchange Resumes Operations

Surbitcoin, the biggest Bitcoin exchange in Venezuela has resumed normal operations. On July 14th the exchange managed to unfreeze one of its fiat bank accounts and reestablish its API integration with Banesco (the biggest financial entity in Venezuela). 

The Bitcoin exchange announced the successful relaunch of its Fiat gateway. Surbitcoin stated that their bank accounts got frozen after an undisclosed party decided to complain to the bank for a delayed withdrawal. Surbitcoin said:

Thanks to the help of Banesco’s Security Department we found the shady actor who caused the fiat gateway outage. We will pursue legal actions against this individual, and we thank our customers for their patience.

Surbitcoin is the most popular Bitcoin exchange in Venezuela, operating since 2014, the exchange has managed to secure a partnership with Banesco, the biggest bank in Venezuela. Surbitcoin enables users to purchase and sell Bitcoins with local currency, Rodrigo Souza, the CEO of Blinktrade (the company running Surbitcoin’s underlying platform), stated:

Surbitcoin is one of the few Bitcoin exchanges in the world offering instant fiat withdrawals and deposits, we send money out in less than 30 seconds in 95% of the time.

Venezuela is a country with severe capital restrictions and a growing Cryptocurrency user base. Venezuelans don’t have too many alternatives to Surbitcoin, as operating a digital asset exchange in the South American country is not easy.

A couple of Bitcoin exchanges opened shop in Venezuela, Yabit and CryptoBuyer want to drive market share out of Surbitcoin and LocalBitcoins, who hold together the bulk of the transactional volume, along with P2P (peer-to-peer) operations.

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