Bitfinex Suspension of U.S. Individual Verification Requests

[pucksterpete]

Quote

Service Changes for U.S. Customers

August 11, 2017

Bitfinex is making changes to the services we provide to U.S. individuals. These changes impact the verification process and trading of certain digital tokens for U.S. customers. Some changes are effective immediately, and others will be gradually implemented in the coming weeks.

Suspension of U.S. Individual Verification Requests

We regret to announce that, effective immediately, we will no longer be accepting verification requests for U.S. individuals.

We have for some time considered pulling away from the retail marketplace in the U.S., and now with a current backlog of verification requests and ongoing difficulties in providing USD deposit and withdrawals for U.S. individuals, we feel that the time has come to begin disengaging from U.S. retail customers.

Several factors have gone into this decision:

While we have been able to normalize banking for some corporate customers and individuals in certain jurisdictions, compliant banking solutions for U.S. individuals remain elusive. We have been slowly and selectively inviting users in particular jurisdictions who meet set criteria to start using banking channels that have come online. This process is ongoing.

A surprisingly small percentage of our revenues come from verified U.S. individual accounts while a dramatically outsized portion of our resources goes into servicing the needs of U.S. individuals, including support, legal and regulatory.

We anticipate the regulatory landscape to become even more challenging in the future.

Bitfinex is not based in the United States. Exchanges based in the U.S. are better positioned to properly service retail U.S. customers.

We are thankful to all of our loyal U.S. customers that have consistently traded with us but, unfortunately, we have an obligation to our whole customer base and to our shareholders to make rational resource allocation decisions.

Furthermore, over the next 90 days, we will be discontinuing services to our existing U.S. individual customers. We will be communicating further with affected users on timing and specifics. Our intention is to reduce disruption as much as possible for our U.S. customers.

We will continue to take advice and implement further changes as circumstances warrant.

Restrictions on U.S. Persons Trading Certain Digital Tokens

Pursuant to the recent report of investigation issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Bitfinex is taking the proactive step of barring U.S. customers from trading certain digital tokens that may be deemed securities in the eyes of the SEC.

The restriction will generally apply to ERC20 tokens issued through "ICOs" and will go into effect at noon UTC on Wednesday, August 16, 2017. No trading of these tokens will be allowed for U.S. customers. At the time of this post, the tokens active on Bitfinex that will be subject to this restriction are EOS (EOS) and Santiment (SAN).

Once again, we regret any inconvenience this change in policy might create, but we believe this to be a prudent measure given the regulatory uncertainty surrounding such digital assets.

 

[Xi195]

Wow. That's a big deal. Thanks for the share Pete.

[Phintech]

Sounds like the regulatory storms are really brewing.

[GreyAndroidGravy]

HA!  They are leaving because of the regulations.  That doesn't sound shady at all!!

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, GreyAndroidGravy said:

HA!  They are leaving because of the regulations.  That doesn't sound shady at all!!

No they are leaving because the cost of implementing the regulations is not worth the value of the small group of users.

If said without any sarcasm your statement is correct.

[liodra]

Hope IOTA will find a new exchange..

[cmbartley]

Yeah, tough stuff. @gatehub would do well to implement IOTA. 

[PhishyKris]

I wrote to Bitfinex support and told them I checked the "I am a US Citizen" box by mistake when I created an account and they sent me a link to change it...HA! As long as you don't send them your info for verification purposes in order to transfer USD then you are fine!

[PhishyKris]

People freaked out yesterday but it's already back over $0.80. Where *bleeping* XRP should be.