
Service Changes for U.S. Customers - Randgalt
https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216%C2%A0
======
ve55
This doesn't surprise me, and I expect other large exchanges to follow suite.

Although the intentions of many US cryptocurrency regulations are to protect
US residents/investors, they are instead leading to the exclusion of US
residents from everything cryptocurrency-related.

No one wants to touch US residents when cryptocurrencies are involved.
Exchanges turn you down. ICOs tell you that you are not allowed to participate
or outright block you. Gambling websites don't want to touch you either, of
course. Neither do derivatives platforms, some sites with margin trading, and
many sites with other types of speculation, such as sports betting, prediction
markets, etc.

It's easier to just exclude US residents instead of dedicating significant
time and resources in trying to comply with new regulations that don't fit new
technology as well as they should.

~~~
kuschku
Additionally, most international banks refuse US citizen unless you bring a
lot of money, because the US taxes all citizen (not just the money made in the
US, or money made by people while they were in the US).

And this goes even further, for example due to US patent laws, and export
regulations (encryption are weapons of war, etc) even lots of open source
software is not directly legal in the US (and many projects outright ban US
citizen from working on these, while living in the US - this is also why the
OpenBSD hackatons originally were a thing[1]).

    
    
        ________________________
    

[1]
[http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html](http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html)

~~~
patio11
_Additionally, most international banks refuse US citizen unless you bring a
lot of money, because the US taxes all citizen (not just the money made in the
US, or money made by people while they were in the US)._

It's less about the taxation per se, which has been true for decades but not
generally dissuaded foreign banks. The big thing that makes banking Americans
annoying is FATCA compliance:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act)

FATCA levels a highly, highly asymmetric weapon against Americans who desire
to bank abroad: if the bank is unwilling to pay a $X ~ $Y0 million dollars in
compliance costs and technology changes (amortized over all of its customers),
they will lose access to USD clearing. That's an unacceptable outcome for most
banks, even banks that one does not generally think of as being heavily
exposed to America.

Thus my recommendation for Americans living abroad: if you want to get an
account with the least hassle, you either want the most gigantic bank you can
think of in your country (which can absorb the compliance costs over their
thousands of US customers because, hey, your expat population does have to
bank somewhere).

~~~
kevinmchugh
It seems like there's a missing `or` clause, if I didn't go with the most
gigantic bank.

~~~
floatingatoll
There isn’t always an “or” when it comes to feasible, tolerable solutions -
especially when working with something designed in part for anonymity and
institutions, both financial and government, that will not tolerate anonymity.

~~~
JamesBarney
But there is usually an "or" following the word "either" ️

------
Keeeeeeeks
According to this video (possibly fake, as the source has been removed),
Bitfinex often played cat-and-mouse games with regards to banking partnerships
in the US:

[https://youtu.be/62cvxPIDBGY](https://youtu.be/62cvxPIDBGY)

The spoofy and Tether thing does lead to some suspicious stuff as well

------
matthewbauer
Between this and the Bitcoin split thing[1], I wonder if there's something
going on behind the scenes at Bitfinex? I read through an article about
alleged "spoofing" at Bitfinex[2] but not sure if I 100% believe it. Does
anyone have any ideas on what's going on the general shadiness of Bitfinex?

[1]:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-e...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-
exchange-had-too-many-bitcoins)

[2]: [https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-
domin...](https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-
the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4)

~~~
benwilber0
After Bitfinex was hacked in 2016[1] to the tune of 120,000+ bitcoins, I
wouldn't trust them with a penny of my money. There's no way they've secured
their infrastructure and process to be anywhere near even basic PCI-DSS, let
alone institutional banking standards. Big surprise they couldn't comply with
USA KYC/AML laws.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitfinex_hack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitfinex_hack)

~~~
ryanlol
>There's no way they've secured their infrastructure and process to be
anywhere near even basic PCI-DSS

This simply couldn't be further from the truth.

~~~
benwilber0
They're in Canada, right? I would like to see what kind of financial data
security standards they adhere to, and what kind of physical/process security
they've implemented since "the hack".

For all we know Bitfinex is just a few guys in an open layout office in
Toronto running their Node.js "exchange" on Linode.

