Bancor Set To Cut Off US-based Users From Trading Citing Lack of Legal Clarity

Bancor, a decentralized trading platform announced on Tuesday via a blog post that it will be closing its doors to US-based traders. This means the US users will not be able to use the Bancor application anymore to convert tokens. Although, users who have Bancor wallets will still manage to log-in, hold tokens as well as transfer tokens from the US; only the conversion functionality is going to be disabled.

Reasons For This New Development

Bancor revealed that the decision was made in light of the increased regulatory uncertainty concerning cryptocurrencies in the country. The post added that they believe their decision is the most judicious they can come up with at the moment for all the members of their ecosystem and that this decision will enable its community and ecosystem as a whole to innovate faster and with greater clarity.

Bancor’s web application will block the availability for token conversion for US citizens or domiciliaries and users with IP addresses from the US. Even in the case of users who hold American citizenship but are not based in the US, they will still be restricted from converting tokens on the platform.

Bancor went on to clarify that the functionality will be blocked to users gaining access to the website which provides an interface to blockchain activity.

According to the announcement, the trading platform will put this update into effect from July 8, 2019.

Recent Rise of Cryptocurrency Entities Blocking US Users

In recent weeks, there has been an upward trend of cryptocurrency entities blocking its US users citing compliance and security reasons. Many of these platforms have also been keen on looking into other parts of the world to expand their market.

Just last week, Changpeng Zhao the founder and CEO of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, announced that the crypto exchange platform will no longer provide its services to its US-based customers. Instead, the crypto exchange platform will soon be partnering with BAM Trading Services to launch Binance US.

Other crypto exchange platforms such as Poloniex and Bittrex have also taken steps to comply and adhere to the increasingly strict regulatory and legal environment in the US. Citing a lack of clarity regarding cryptocurrencies in the country, Poloniex has so far de-listed 9 crypto-assets from its exchange. Bittrex also de-listed a total of 40 cryptocurrencies from its exchange with the aim of transitioning these crypto-assets to Bittrex International starting from June 28, 2019.