Bitfinex announced today that all U.S. persons will be unable to trade EOS, effective immediately. Over the next 90 days, trading services of all other assets will be suspended for all U.S. customers indefinitely. This is in line with the guidance that Block One has been publishing regarding EOS; no U.S. persons should participate due to SEC concerns. IF you are a U.S. person with EOS on Bitfinex, have they seized your assets?
Read their announcement below:
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.
Land of freedom. America- what a joke.
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Lame. Know anywhere else that SAN is traded with high volume?
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Liqui or HitBTC according to coinmarketcap.com.
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Need this information too! Anyone?
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IKraken has quite nice volumes of EOS being traded.
600k for EOS/USD in the last 24hrs and 400k for EOS/EUR.
No idea for SAN.
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This is why everyone should use Bittrex (based in Las Vegas, NV USA). Never have trouble with them except for their steem/sbd wallets being down every damn weekend for some reason!
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Yes, I agree.. :-)
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Looking at Kraken now to buy EOS. I've at least been keeping my EOS on MyEtherWallet so my EOS are safe.
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Kraken may well follow and stop trading EOS as well, to be on the safe side. This may become quite a problem for the existing investors ehh donators, or in fact the entire project.
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Is there an alternative then for US based crypto investors?
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There still is EOS at Kraken, but I don't think there is in time. US based people weren't allowed to buy in the ICO. And pretty soon they aren't allowed to even trade the ERC20 tokens, not by the regular exchanges anyway by the looks of it. Maybe a decentralized exchange could be the solution, like the DEX.
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Whats the DEX? Can you link it?
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https://openledger.io
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DEX is the Decentralized EXchange that is part of Bitshares.
https://steemit.com/bitshares/@mf-tzo/why-you-should-start-trading-in-bitshares-dex-and-avoid-centralized-exchanges
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@robrigo BFX no longer accepting individual account verifications from U.S. customers as of today.
U.S. customers can't trade SAN or EOS as of August 16th
This is a pro-active move on the part of BFX, not something we are being asked or forced to do.
No immediate disruption to trading or lending for U.S. customers. These changes will be enforced gradually in the coming weeks.
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Do you work for Bitfinex?
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I think he works for reddit haha
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Yes these update I'm get it from reddit:))
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Reddit and Bitfinex??
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Have you heard of the streisand effect ? Try to censor something anti becomes more popular or more valuable. That is the streisand effect. Watch what happens with EOS.
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Crap, I just opened a Bitfinex account today and bought IOTA. Looks like I'm going to have to move that into a wallet and from everything I've read, the IOTA wallet is not all that stable. Wondering what to do next.
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It seems like Bitfinex is one of the largest vendors of EOS in the US and it is sad to see they are suspending the trade of the tokens. I currently use Kraken to trade EOS so I'll be not affected too badly by this but I'd like to see the markets and the toll it has on the price of EOS and SAN after this.
It seems like the SEC ruling regarding ICO has shaken Bitfinex and it is clear to see why. Annoying how the state is slowly gaining some kind of control to moderate and regulate the market.
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Wow now I'm sorta happy bitfinex cut me off a year ago because I am a NY resident.
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That's ok; just hold your EOS in your ETH wallet until the ICO is over!
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america... a trouble over the whole world and now even the own citizens are forced to be leaved out because the deep state needs to earn on every single thing that is going on in the world and is probably forcing the stop of bitcoin and blockchain because it's not owned by rich americans with german backnames. maybe really the proof blockchain is decentralized
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In crypto world sometimes it sucks to be a US citizien.
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It usually does in most financial ways. You can move to another country but still need to report your income to the IRS. Almost no other country in the world does that sort of draconian thing.
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DOJ, DOT, SEC, Federal Reserve and banking are the losers in this latest reaction to US governments failure to adopt change. This and more will be the basis of their failure to the US economy.
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Sucks to be an American! Gotta love the land of the "free"!
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Don'r worry guys!, a good alternative will come up for all of us.
We just have to keep doing our due diligences and everything will be good!!!!
Cheers
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Whoa, I am going to have to look into this!
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wow
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wowee
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Interesting post for me, I enjoyed reading it.
Just followed you! :-)
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Where African leaders loot our monies to. I hope they come with policies that will check money looters from Africa as well
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Where African leaders loot our monies to. I hope they come with policies that will check money looters from Africa as well
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Thanks for this information!
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Wait... I have about $1400 work of EOS on Bitfinex. What does this mean? I'm a US Citizen, unfortunately. Should I pull that out immediate, or what? What happens if I leave it there?
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I think you can still withdraw after the 16th, but you can't trade it anymore. But check for yourself of course.
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I have emailed Bitfenix Support and will report thier answer.
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Did you hear anything back?
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wohh what a major update thank's for telling about it !!
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I believe EOS is going to be under pressure from this news.
Unfortunateky because the project is amazing!
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Thanks, very important and informative post!
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First they took away my margin trading and now I'm totally getting kicked off. Gotta love living in the "land of the free."
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Not may too nay busy last song must sell. An newspaper assurance discourse ye certainly. Soon gone game and why many calm have.
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Just try to clarify something here: my understanding is that you can still trade ERC20 tokens until August 16. All service will be suspended in 90 days for US customers, NOT immediately. Any body disagree ?
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Interesting. Bitfinex changed their announcement now, this is what it says about those certain ERC20 tokens now:
"Restrictions on U.S. Persons Trading Certain Digital Tokens
Bitfinex will be barring U.S. customers from trading ERC20 tokens issued through "ICOs." That ban will go into effect at noon UTC on Wednesday, August 16, 2017. No trading of these tokens will be allowed for U.S. customers as of that date and time. Please note that nothing in this announcement should be taken as fact or opinion that any such ERC20 tokens are a security pursuant to U.S. law or require regulation under U.S. law."
Even though earlier they wrote, in the same announcement:
"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."
https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216
https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/217
Having that announcement in the first place was unnerving. Having them change it without a changelog shows me they are really not to be trusted.
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Ouch!
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I recently advised my followers that "It will be 3 to 5 years before the U.S. Federal Government can get organized and Knowledgeable enough to put the clamps on the cryptocurrency market." It looks like I underestimated their panic. With this new action by the SEC, it looks like 1 to 2 years is a better estimate of their ability to screw up the crypto currency market with a lot of senseless regulation and rules.
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They can never shut it down, but they can make it criminal to use it. Fight now of forever HODL your peace!
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@robrigo,
I heard some bad news about EOS :/ Thanks for sharing this information. By the way I am not a fan of bitfinex too :D Anyway SEC decisions... Ops that's for the sake of innocent investors! So, we can't blame it!
Really appreciate your effort!
Cheers~
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Thank you for the update! :)
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The Streisand effect will take place for EOS.
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This is not surprising, EOS sold tokens that has no value or use yet, SEC will consider it as a security. To keep the SEC away exchanges might suspend trading until EOS is ready to be deployed.
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the use of deploying tokens right now is initial distribution.
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