Bitfinex ready to suspend its services for US individual customers

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The decision comes after the announcement that the company did on August the 11^th regarding the situation. “We are terminating trading, deposits, and withdrawal functionality for U.S. individual customers by no later than November 9, 2017”, the company Bitfinex communicated.

Since August 11^th, Bitfinex does not receive verification requests from US individual customers. “We regret to announce that we will no longer be accepting verification requests for U.S. individuals”, they wrote on their webpage.

The reasons behind the decision

Bitfinex has had different problems in the United States, including banking regulations in certain jurisdictions. This situation required a lot of effort from Bitfinex and its support team, but these solutions remain elusive.

This trading exchange also believes that the regulatory environment will change and will obstruct the normal performance of the company. “We anticipate the regulatory landscape to become even more challenging in the future”, describes the statement.

Bitfinex team expressed that there are unnecessary state barriers, as New York’s BitLicense. Such restrictions, in addition to federal policies, make the settlement of cryptocurrency businesses difficult and tedious. In this way, companies would decide to move from the North American country to more friendly nations.

Some weeks ago, the Daily Caller informed that at least three members of the U.S. Congress are working on legislation to protect cryptocurrencies from government interference, although they clarified that the currencies should have certain minimum conditions. These regulations would prevent cryptocurrencies from being used by terrorists, drug dealers or other kind of illegal activity.

Countries like South Korea, China or Russia are taking different measures to fight against illegal activities executed with decentralized cryptocurrencies.

Bitfinex was not profitable

The trading platform team declared that it is not located in the United States. This particular situation hinders the possibility of offering a better service to the U.S. customers. Being abroad makes difficult the logistic measures needed to operate properly in the United States.

In addition to the several factors mentioned before, Bitfinex was not earning enough to maintain its activity in the U.S. “A surprisingly small percentage of our revenues come from U.S. verified individual accounts while a dramatically outsized portion of our resources goes into servicing the needs of U.S. individuals, including support, legal and regulatory subjects”, the company said in the announcement.

Bitfinex is not the only exchange available in the United States. U.S. customers that have been reached by this measure, could send their funds to exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase or Gemini, not to mention others.

United States along with Japan and South Korea are the countries with the largest trading volume on earth. These three countries account for over 90% of Bitcoin traded on exchanges, as news.bitcoin.com reported.