Belgium's only cryptocurrency platform suspends activities

By Marine Strauss

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The first and only Belgian cryptocurrency lending platform, Bit4You, said it was suspending its activities after CoinLoan, one of its main service providers, was declared insolvent by an Estonian court.

CoinLoan, a crypto lending company based in the Baltic state, also no longer has the required registration as a custodian of virtual currencies, Bit4You said in a statement on its website.

"To date, we have no indication that the virtual currencies held on behalf of our customers with CoinLoan cannot be recovered," Bit4You added.

As proportions of Bit4You's customers' investments, CoinLoan holds around 85.66% of Ripple (XRP) coin, around 81.45% of top cryptocurrency bitcoin and 67.32% of Ethereum, according to the statement.

A court in Estonia unexpectedly ordered CoinLoan to halt all operations, including withdrawals, on April 24. The company had limited user withdrawals in July 2022 to $5,000 per 24-hour period to stave off a run on its funds.

(Reporting by Marine Strauss, editing by GV De Clercq and John Stonestreet)