Bitcoin exchange Harborly, Inc. has ceased trading ostensively due to the owners seeking greener pastures with a new project.

Founded in 2014, Harborly pitched itself as a team of experienced entrepreneurs, financial professionals and legal advisors committed to a global vision of digital currency.

The service itself was sold as a global, easy to use platform which bridged the gap between traditional financial systems and the digital currency markets.

“With your Harborly account you can easily buy and sell Bitcoin and Litecoin across the globe,” the site once said.

The company made the official announcement of its closure via blog post, where it claimed that there were no nefarious reasons for the closure, a pleasant change given the history of Bitcoin exchanges over the last 12-18 months.

“We would like to state categorically that Harborly’s shutdown has not been prompted by a hack, by fraudulent activity, or by a security-related incident,” the post reads. “While that may have been true for other firms in the Bitcoin space, this is not the case for Harborly.”

“Instead, a new venture that we’ve been working on as a side project has recently gained traction. Given the potential of the opportunity, it makes far more sense for us to shift our limited resources away from Harborly to focus on this new project.”

Strangely, despite having announced the closure of the service, the company then notes that it may be acquired: “We would also like to mention that Harborly is in the process of finding an acquirer, and we’re excited to sell to an organization with the resources to see what we started through to the end.”

Dime a dozen

While the owners of Harborly can spin the reason for the shutdown all they like, the reality is that the service never found traction in a marketplace where Bitcoin exchanges are literally in 2015 nearly a dime a dozen.

The concept that the site might be acquired makes even less sense: if someone was seriously interested in buying Harborly they’d want to buy it as an entity that is not only still trading, but has a customer base, neither of which the exchange now has that it has been closed.

While it’s refreshing to see an exchange close without the founders running off with the Bitcoins it was holding, or due to being hacked, expect more moves like this in the months and years ahead as the Bitcoin market continues to mature, complete with venture capital investments, which will likely see larger Bitcoin exchanges come to dominate the market to the detriment of smaller players similar to the likes of Harborly.

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