Bitfinex will be terminating trading, deposits and withdrawal functionality for all U.S. customers, which will come into effect no later than November 9, 2017. The announcement urges all U.S.-based customers to withdraw their cryptocurrency tokens before the deadline.
With the SEC starting to crack down on ICOs deemed as securities that would be subject to existing financial regulations, do you see other exchanges following suit and exiting the U.S. Market?
Absolutely. We can already see companies like Bittrex and Poloniex drastically increasing the personal information required to sign up for new accounts, and decreased withdrawal limits. In the case of Bittrex, we also recently saw mass account disabling, which seems to be related to country of origin. All of these things point to increased pressure from US regulators. Both companies are US companies, so they can't make the argument that they aren't operating in the US, anyway.
In Bitfinex's case, this may not solve their legal problems with the US government. They've been acting as a money transmitter in the US for several years now, and they issued securities (tradeable debt tokens) to US customers and also allowed token security trading in general. It's also never clear after administrative action from a US agency -- such as the fine from the CFTC to Bitfinex a couple years ago -- if the problems were rectified. The regulatory agencies don't work like that.
