Bitfinex: Service Changes for U.S. Customers

[gokayc]

Bitfinex is making changes to the services we provide to U.S. individuals.

"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."

https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216

[U2]

Tl;dr version: we got in shit so now it's your problem. In the US they want you to have to go through useless middlemen so it creates jobs. Obsolete jobs, but jobs just the same.

[davis196]

It`s suspicious that such a small part of Bitfinex users are verified US individuals.
Perhaps most of the USA users on Bitfinex claim that they are not from USA or they are not verified because they want to save taxes.I guess that USA is still not a very bitcoin and cryptocurrency-friendly country.
We all are waiting for this to change.

[HabBear]

This is ironic and unfortunate. Bitcoin was likely created in the US...the first people beyond Satoshi to download nodes and mine bitcoin were in the US. And now the benefactors of that creation are turning their backs on the people in the US that made it possible for these entities to exist.

Bitfinex is making changes to the services we provide to U.S. individuals.

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

Translation: We will continue to take advice from the US authorities, regardless of how silly or scaremongering they are.

Where is Bitfinex located? EDIT: Hong Kong

[Yakamoto]

It`s suspicious that such a small part of Bitfinex users are verified US individuals.
Perhaps most of the USA users on Bitfinex claim that they are not from USA or they are not verified because they want to save taxes.I guess that USA is still not a very bitcoin and cryptocurrency-friendly country.
We all are waiting for this to change.

Well it does really surprise me to be completely honest, I don't think that there would be a lot of users verified on Bitfinex coming from the United States because there are, one, a lot more US-based exchanges that can be used and, two, not a ton of whales which are using the US markets as places to manipulate (if they can even do that now).

Foreign (from the US) exchanges also have a lot of the volume overall, so, likely, a majority of their users using those exchanges would be using whatever is relatively close to them, and can actually provide services properly.

[manchester93]

It`s suspicious that such a small part of Bitfinex users are verified US individuals.
Perhaps most of the USA users on Bitfinex claim that they are not from USA or they are not verified because they want to save taxes.

They are definitely either lying about this, or most US users clicked the box that said they weren't from the US (when Bitfinex relaunched last summer). I'd say many remain unverified for tax reasons.

[Kaller]

This does not surprise me at all.
It seems the US gov is cracking down hard on Bitcoin exchanges, trying to make it difficult or impossible/illegal to do business there.
They shut down BTC-e, giving Poloniex problems and now this.
This reminds me of online poker. The US banned it as a form of gambling, when in reality it isn't.
Although Bitcoin is used to launder illegally acquired money which is a whole different enchilada.

[audaciousbeing]

All this statement are just trying to sugar quote the real issue here and its nothing about service or whatever, its because the fear of USA is the beginning of wisdom and with what btc-e faced, they don't want to face the same thing. But for me, I would not trust any exchange site with large funds because discontinuing their services does not absolve them from the past to be gone after by the US authorities. The unfortunate thing here is that the country that thrives on freedom is gradually being left out from the financial freedom of the future.

[HabBear]

It appears there might be a new notice from Bitfinex out that refers to legal challenges with the US government, specificlaly related to the existence of ICO tokens.

The exchange explained that the decision follows a recent investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on how tokens issued by way of an initial coin offering (ICO) may be considered securities.

I wasn't aware of specific investigations into ICOs...anyone else heard of such investigations?

[HowlingMad]

Hello all,
I live in the US, and specifically New York State.  The landscape here is NOT crypto-friendly.  The Wall Street brokers and the bankers are scared as hell over the amount of money that can be made in crypto.  I mentioned to a Vice President of a bank how much money I had made in crypto last several years and he was shocked.  You have to remember that the banks, stock exchanges, and central bank (Federal Reserve Bank) are all private companies.

I could see where the US is a small percentage of Bitfinex.  The majority of their clients are in Asia, specifically Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. 


Well I was making a decent amount of USD on funding at Bitfinex.  Poloniex is rediculously low as an annual return, but still better than the banks which return 0.05% for a savings account ( Poloniex ~3% per annum).  Wonder if I can get some Canadian friends to handle this for me.

[HowlingMad]

It appears there might be a new notice from Bitfinex out that refers to legal challenges with the US government, specificlaly related to the existence of ICO tokens.

The exchange explained that the decision follows a recent investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on how tokens issued by way of an initial coin offering (ICO) may be considered securities.

I wasn't aware of specific investigations into ICOs...anyone else heard of such investigations?

Yes if you look at the announcement there is a SEC document that specifies their reasoning.  US investors have to $1M USD in assets before they can get involved in IPO's so the SEC spun that to include ICO's. 

After several ICO's have had millions of dollars invested in a single day, Wall Street is very scared.... So the SEC, their puppets, had to do something about it.

[RedditMaster]

Bitfinex and Coinbase will be dropping ETH support (USA only) becaue Ethereum itself started as an ICO.

Americans got so rich off the first tech bubble (Apple, Google, Amazon, e-bay, etc), that they feel guilty and want the rest of the world to get rich off this new tech bubble.  

Americans are just trying to improve their image globally, and by allowing every other country in the world to get rich first, is a decent start.  Americans want it this way because they voted for it to be this way.  Thats why it is called freedom.

Seriously?

Why are they dropping support for ETH when it is such a valuable thing and so many businesses use it?

[sylance]

Bitfinex and Coinbase will be dropping ETH support (USA only) becaue Ethereum itself started as an ICO.

Americans got so rich off the first tech bubble (Apple, Google, Amazon, e-bay, etc), that they feel guilty and want the rest of the world to get rich off this new tech bubble.  

Americans are just trying to improve their image globally, and by allowing every other country in the world to get rich first, is a decent start.  Americans want it this way because they voted for it to be this way.  Thats why it is called freedom.

Seriously?

Why are they dropping support for ETH when it is such a valuable thing and so many businesses use it?

ETH was launched as an ICO/IPO

This thread is very confusing considering you're quoting something that doesn't exist in this specific thread.  It's well known that Bitfinex is discontinuing support for US customers, but where did you read Coinbase is?  I can't find that anywhere. 

While I'm in this thread... anyone have an update on Bitfinex's plans?  They said 30-days they'll reach out to their US customers with the off-boarding steps but I haven't heard anything.