Poloniex being sold off and new company is dropping US customers
This isn't a big issue, as far as I'm concerned, we already closed our account at Poloniex a while back. Their service had become terrible (deposit/withdrawal paths were often down).
And most recently, they dropped support for a number of coins, including Steem. I guess all that may have been related to this sale of the company (or "spin out", as they like to call it, since there's a larger company, Circle, that had bought Poloniex a while back).
I'm pasting the contents of the email I received, as it might be of interest to non-US people as well, who won't receive the email, I suppose (or if it lands in your spam folder, like my copy did):
Hello Poloniex Customer,
We are writing to inform you that Poloniex is spinning out from Circle into a new company called Polo Digital Assets, Ltd. This new company will have the full backing of a major Asian investment group, who intends to focus on the needs of global crypto traders.
Unfortunately, the Poloniex spin out will not include US customers, so Circle is winding down access to the Poloniex exchange for you and other US customers. Here is the wind down schedule:
October 18, 2019, US persons will no longer be able to create, or complete the set-up, of a new Poloniex account.
November 1, 2019, you will no longer be able to execute trades and should no longer deposit assets.
You will be able to access and withdraw your cryptocurrencies, through Circle until at least December 15, 2019.
The full announcement can be found here and our Customer Support Team is available to answer any questions you may have. Simply reply to this message and we will get back to you.
Team Poloniex
Most of the traders and crypto investors come from the US i don't understand why they did not allow US to trade at their new Poloniex. will they stay longer on that idea? will! let see what they can do.
Kurata
hahaha😂😂
I think it's true that a lot of crypo investors come from the US, at least in terms of wealth. But I don't think it's "most". In the past at least, I think more has come from Asia (especially China and Korea). And regulations in the US make it difficult to safely operate a cryptoexchange without risking difficult-to-predict legal troubles.
For example, it's hard to know if the coins that you are listing might be considered securities by the SEC (because the rules are very vague and the SEC doesn't just say which coins they consider securities and which ones they don't). And if the SEC decides that it's a security, then you're supposed to have a special license to allow users to trade that coin, and if you don't have that license, then you could be fined for allowing trading on your exchange. Even if you have that license, there still can be issues in which of your users are allowed to exchange that coin, depending on if they have enough wealth to be considered an "accredited investor" (just means someone rich enough that they are allowed to speculate on risky investments).
A similar problem can arise with respect to money transmission laws in the US. In this case, if you accept US customers, then you have to make special reports to the US financial crimes enforcement (FINCEN) organization if transactions are "suspicious" and exceed certain amounts of money. It also requires you to keep all sorts of additional records about your customers.
These rules, plus the concern that the rules and/or interpretation of these rules can change at any time, make it more difficult and scary to operate a cryptocurrency exchange that accepts US customers. This is also why Bitfinex and Binance have stopped accepting US customers.
Now i understood,so it is not easy for them also because of that difficulties,and i am sure the new owner comes from asia and they are just taking the best and easy way for their exchange.
Oh, I forgot to mention, there's also regulations around "commodity derivatives" if you allow the purchase of such products by US customers. An example of a derivative would be the bitcoin future contracts offered by BitMex that allow you to invest a small amount in a "leveraged" manner to invest at a higher risk level for a potentially higher return on your investment. In order to offer such investment opportunities to US customers, you would have to get them approved by CFTC (another US regulatory body, this one in charge of commodity derivatives). The CFTC fined Bitfinex ( a Hong Kong-based company) a while back, and this was probably the initial catalyst for Bitfinex to drop US customers.
LOL, Justin Sun is the leading investor. It's going to be an exchange focused on Tron, I guess.
Hmm, good to know, thanks for info.
It seems to me they're moving to Asia to escape USA regulations. Also, Asia has been notorious for shady exchanges, so Poloniex joining them is a big question mark for me.
In the end, I don't give a shit about Poloniex, I stopped using them 2 years ago (I know many people did too) for their incompetence, lack of support and constant "maintenance" on coins which always seem to happen "conveniently" in the thick of high volumes.
I said it once, and I say it again when they delisted STEEM: good riddance.
The U.S is getting more and more behind when it comes to crypto.
So glad Poloniex is no longer holding steem, they've been horrid as a service provider and lots of shady news around it too. I think coins are just so desperate to be on an exchange and get sort of volume that they make these deals with the devil
'Spin' usually means 'misdirect'.. Good to see the spinning of spin itself. haha
74 dollars and trending for this?
Not bad.
Thank you for this public announcement @blocktrades. Initially, the news that Circle had invested in them sounded like a positive development, but ... Guess not.
My own experience with them was uhhh ... "less than optimum," so I am not personally too distressed by this news. I only dealt with them, when they were the only accessible source of crypto in which I was interested. Thankfully, I had gotten my deposits safely withdrawn sometime ago ...
I coulda swore Square or Circle bought them out a couple years back?
Yes, Circle bought them. Circle ran and/or runs an over-the-counter market for trading bitcoin, I think, and decided to expand into the general exchange business with the acquisition of Poloniex. I guess it didn't work out for them.
Ahh, they don't trade Steem anymore so good riddance I suppose. Haven't touched Poloniex in at least 2 1/2 or 3 years.
Why is this copypasted paragraph trending??