[WARNING] Bitfinex suspended trading EOS and SAN for all U.S. persons effective August 16 2017 noon UTC

in #eos7 years ago (edited)

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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.

Link to SEC investigation

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Land of freedom. America- what a joke.

Lame. Know anywhere else that SAN is traded with high volume?

Liqui or HitBTC according to coinmarketcap.com.

Need this information too! Anyone?

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.

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!

Yes, I agree.. :-)

Looking at Kraken now to buy EOS. I've at least been keeping my EOS on MyEtherWallet so my EOS are safe.

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.

Is there an alternative then for US based crypto investors?

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.

Whats the DEX? Can you link it?

@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.

Do you work for Bitfinex?

I think he works for reddit haha

Yes these update I'm get it from reddit:))

Reddit and Bitfinex??

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.

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.

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.

Wow now I'm sorta happy bitfinex cut me off a year ago because I am a NY resident.

That's ok; just hold your EOS in your ETH wallet until the ICO is over!

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

In crypto world sometimes it sucks to be a US citizien.

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.