Ripple has announced that its Ripple Trade platform will be closing in early 2016.
According to its website, the platform facilitates the trading of hundreds of assets including fiat currencies, Cryptocurrencies and gold. It was intended to be the most direct and economical venue to acquire Ripple’s XRP currency.
In its announcement, the company said:
"Over the past two years, our company has honed its focus on building infrastructure technology for banks; thus we are discontinuing operations of Ripple Trade in early 2016."
In its place, Ripple is directing users to GateHub, which supports a multi-asset wallet, analytics, API, Payments , and trading. Supported assets include XRP, bitcoin, dollars, euros gold and silver. The platform says the assets can be traded directly over the Ripple network.
Launched in 2012, Ripple aims to support instant cross-border payments through its network and gateways. These gateways can be integrated by financial institutions, several of which have joined the network or have explored doing so over the past two years.
GateHub's website says that the platform will provide supported gateways with identity and risk management tools.
Ripple has set up an "optimal migration path" for users to move their holdings from Ripple Trade to GateHub. Alternatively, they can make a manual transfer to external wallets.
US-based users have until January 13 to migrate their funds through a gateway or to another wallet provider, after which the funds will no longer be accessible. Users based outside of the US will have longer; an exact deadline for them is yet to be determined.
GateHub Ltd. is a UK-based company, incorporated on November 14, 2014. In June this year, it unveiled its "Gateway as a Service", which aims to make it easier for institutions to become Ripple gateways. Launch was scheduled for Q4 2015.
