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In a blog post out late yesterday, Bitfinex announced that they will no longer be servicing US based clients.

It has already been known that Bitfinex was moving in this direction, but now it is official and there is even a move out date!

What is going on?

Due to regulatory hurdles affecting all US based customers, Bitfinex announced that they will no longer be offering services to US based customers.

The official wording from the exchange:

Specifically Bitfinex had this to say:

"U.S. customers are already barred from receiving financing from other users on Bitfinex's peer-to-peer financing platform."

"This restriction will remain and, in addition, U.S. individual customers will no longer be able to provide financing on Bitfinex effective November 9, 2017."

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What exactly does this mean?

This means that all US based customers holding cryptocurrency on that exchange must transfer them out and all US based customers will be prohibited from using any of the services on that exchange.

As you can see, the deadline for US based customers is November 9th, though trades and transfers may still be processed after that date by special request in order to accommodate all existing customers.

New old news?

The full exit of US based customers from Bitfinex has been in the cards for some time now.

They had already prohibited customers from certain states from using their services to try and comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

Now, the main reasoning behind the broad and far reaching move seems to be the regulatory requirements mandated by the US for US based clients.

Specifically, upon review of their services, Bitfinex concluded that the amount of resources they were using to service their relatively small US customer base didn't make sense financially any longer.

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My thoughts:

This is really not all that surprising and is all part of regulation making its way into the cryptocurrency markets.

Local exchanges will rise up and be regulated more in line with the standards mandated by their own local governments.

In the short term it can feel like a bad thing and have some short term negative effects on prices etc.

However, the overall net effect will likely be very positive for the space. Some regulation is needed for these things to reach the masses.

As long as the regulation isn't too stifling, the net effect will be overwhelmingly positive.

Stay informed my friends.

Sources:

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex-drops-us-customers/

Image Sources:

http://alpinesignstudio.com/the-importance-of-entrance-and-exit-signs-in-smyrna-ga/

https://perfectwasteoftime.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/in-english-please/

http://www.freedomworks.org/content/regulation-madness-coming-end

Follow me: @jrcornel