Binance Blocking US Customers; Deribit Users have Until Dec. 9 to Get Verified

Cryptocurrency exchanges have taken to follow the regulatory measures following the BitMEX incident.

BitMEX accelerated its KYC program, requiring its customers to get verified by Nov. 5, preponed for the previous deadline of Feb 2021 after the US government charged the derivatives exchange and its founders for violating know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

Deribit users also have until Dec. 9, 2020, to become verified and upload their verification documents. The official message on crypto derivatives platform Deribit reads,

“Due to the various recent regulatory and legal developments globally, we have decided to further increase our efforts to identify our clients.”

Now, Binance has also begun to block US users, a move that was announced by the leading spot exchange last year in July. At the time, it was said that Binance would stop serving US residents two months after that, but the exchange has been allowing the US users to access its platform until now.

The exchange had started asking its customers to confirm that they were not a US citizen by ticking “I'm not [American]” to set up accounts. Now, Binance is taking it one step further and is sending out emails to users based on their IP addresses.

“We noted your account may be associated with the U.S. due to an IP address you connected from in the past.

In-line with regulatory requirements, we are unable to provide services to U.S. citizens or residents.”

A US resident is required to transfer their assets out of the exchange within 90 days and shift to either Binance US, launched in Sept. 2019, or other platforms that serve US customers.

Recently, Forbes published a report detailing Binance’s efforts to avoid US regulators scrutiny through an “elaborate corporate structure designed to intentionally deceive regulators and surreptitiously profit from crypto investors in the United States.”