Topic: Bittrex will stop serving a number of countries. (Read 234 times)

It looks like Bittrex has released an update explaining the situation.

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Why is Bittrex Global suspending service in the Ukraine, Belarus, Burundi, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Panama?

Bittrex Global prides itself on being not only the safest and securest place to trade cryptocurrency but also the most strictly regulated. With that in mind, due to the current regulatory environment in certain jurisdictions, we were instructed by our Legal and Compliance teams that in the short-term, we would need to suspend service from a few countries, these include: Ukraine, Belarus, Burundi, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Panama.

What do I need to do if I am from one of the affected countries?

Please login to Bittrex Global and withdraw all of your funds before September 24th, 2020.  For additional help please see our support article here.
If you have two-factor enabled, you will need to enter your 6 digit code. If you do not have two-factor enabled, you will need to login to your email account and click the verification link sent to you.

Please note if your balance is below the minimum withdrawal amount for the wallet, you will not be able to withdraw it. The minimum withdrawal for all coins must be greater than 3 times the fee. For example, your balance in BTC must be .00150001 or greater as the fee is .0005.

When is the last day I will be able to access the funds in my account?

Your account will be active until September 24, 2020, 23:59 UTC, after this time, service will be suspended.

What happens if I do not access my funds by September 24th, 2020?

We highly recommend that you withdraw your funds immediately. If funds remain in your account after September 24, 2020, 23:59 UTC, we cannot guarantee their withdrawal. In the event that you have not withdrawn funds from your account before the deadline, you may still be able to withdraw your funds, but will not be able to trade with the balance in your account. If any issues arise, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service team.

There haven’t been any recent changes to the regulatory policies in my country, why is this happening now?

Bittrex Global’s Compliance and Legal teams monitor the regulatory landscape in all countries it operates in, as well as the interaction of rules and regulations in all these jurisdictions. Although it is not an easy decision, at this time, our team believes that suspending services in the affected countries is the best course of action.

https://bittrexglobal.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016422699-Important-Account-Information-for-Bittrex-Global-Users-in-Ukraine-Belarus-Burundi-Mali-Myanmar-Nicaragua-and-Panama

Ukraine could have been added due to some people/entities associated with Crimea and Donbas who are sanctioned (but in such a case it's customary to simply bar people from those regions, not from the entire country). Perhaps they didn't have too many Ukrainian residents in the first place.

You are totally right and I see that more exchanges are doing the same thing, not only big but also small once.

This is very hard to get any license in the EU if you will allow clients from any of these countries, not only in exchanges but also in other crypto instruments or projects and their crypto-related products. Many of them try to be safe and regulated as good as possible, to avoid problems, especially with the USA because (this is strange for me), it seems that they have authority everywhere today in the internet times.

Not a big wonder the EU wants to have the best relations with the USA and do whatever it takes to please them. TBH I even don't know from where Bittrex now operates?

This changes so fast by so many that it's hard to keep a track and they inform about this after or even not at all.
I hope that the newest Dexes will change something and finally will take the crypto market out from the hands of centralized exchanges.
No KYC, no problems, no worries about coins, country limitations, nothing - DEX.

In This archived Link, the list of  Countries at first was 31

Observations

Countries that were in the first list but are now off the updated list;

1. Afghanistan

Newly added Countries in the Update List

1. Belarus
2. Burundi
3. Mali
4. Myanmar
5. Nicaragua
6. Panama
7. Ukraine

From what I can deduce about both lists. It is very likely that Bittrex is stopping their services basing on Countries that are not in good terms with the US or Countries whose political atmosphere is uncertain and not anything to do with the crypto regulations in that particular Country. To be realistic some of these Countries rarely even appear any where in the crypto News which mean crypto trading or usage in such countries is very low

For example look at the newly added countries. Most if not all are all over the International news lately due to political turmoils and riots.

There are probably the governments that had made it clear to Bittrex that they don't want their citizens to trade crypto. The rest are not all crypto friendly as most of them don't even have a regulation about crypto trading like my country itself. And even in the countries that are letting it's user trade have individual rules and regulations and for some, taxes involved, we would see more and more localization of exchanges in the future turning crypto to something that's traded under close eye by the government, like gold.

I found an old link ^[1] and from what i can gather, these were the changes on Sept 2:

- Countries added (+7): Belarus, Burundi, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Panama, Ukraine

- Countries removed (-1): Afghanistan

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1 . https://steempeak.com/writing/@jadams2k18/bittrex-is-ceasing-operations-in-my-country

Ouch! That's a long list. For sure their trading volume will diminish significantly which means less profits for the company. We cannot consider this news as an advantage for their rivals either — it was a bad omen indeed. Maybe the rest will get banned too soon *knock on the wood.

There's a report on 2019 that they ban Venezuela and 30 countries from using their service but don't tell them why? Seems that Bittrex want the specific reason confidential. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bittrex-international-halts-service-in-venezuela-and-30-more-countries

I wonder why bittrex makes that decision. But I think about each government that forces bittrex to stop their services to their people, so people won't have a chance to trade using bittrex. I think bittrex will not explain why they do that because that will be their regulation to allow people from one country. Maybe we can wait for the next update news from bittrex, so we don't have to guess. And we hope that we can still allow to used of bittrex to trade.

Bittrex doesn't really have that much of clients around the world, as many preferred either Binance, KuCoin, or Poloniex. Also, the list are only the countries that had some changes with their laws and regulations about online cryptocurrency trading, hence some are still being supported (such as Philippines)

Also, this shouldn't be here in the Bitcoin Discussion board but rather on Trading Discussion, as the topic is mainly about a trading platform, not in general Bitcoin. Better move this.

Well there are lot of Platform that the people of those countries can use so this is not really a Bad news for Crypto community.

And Besides Most user of Bittrex trades altcoin then It is not a loss for a Bitcoin users.

But still it is a Loss for Bittrex and not the Crypto world.

maybe Most of them has strict rules that will keep safe their people.

I wonder what sort of regulatory requirements forced them to stop operating in those countries. I understand that some countries openly denounce crypto so they implement really strict regulations. I just hope that someday, these countries will have enough safety nets to manage whatever risks they are so afraid to take just to cut crypto some slack.    

I have read this news and it was not a great shock for me to tell the truth. Sometimes it happens - exchanges or services make different limitation lists, after some time they change it and make the list of permissions and so on. I used in the past this exchange, nowadays I do not have there anything. So personally I will lose nothing) There are lots of other exchanges that are good. Of course for those, who had some assets on this exchange, it is not a good situation. It proves that your assets should not be kept on the exchanges, because some day you may lose them because of some reasons.

Most of the countries mentioned are third world and poor countries and i wonder why they took the decision to ban the customers, may be they faced illegal activities and fake verification identities, i was expecting all these exchanges coming up with restrictions like these when regulations come into affect but it is sad to see that they are banning countries even before that. There are many exchanges that had these ban and expect more exchanges to follow the process.

Who has an idea about the listed countries previous to the update? I just know that 6 new countries were added (previously 31 and now 37), but don't know which.

As @mk4 said, bittrex is being used to do trading. Not much gonna affect bitcoin since it also has a small volume compared to other big exchanges like binance. It is just unfortunate for those users whose country is on the list, but they can just migrate into another exchange which may be a better move if they do so.

Hihi

I was asking myself why they are not as I didn't see anything in T&C when I first searched but as usual Iran an North Korea have their own special place, feels like a deja-vu from localbitcoins
Btw, bittrex has a ton of terms and conditions and bla bla bla on their website, hard to find anything there
https://bittrex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001319332-Update-New-Terms-of-Service-Restricted-Locations-Section


So, mystery solved!

It's okay, Bittrex has inherently low trading volume and I think users in these countries leaving won't affect trading volume.
Due to some regulations, they are forced to stop the service, but if they still find a way to bypass security gateways and transact with lower volumes and without KYC installed, they can continue using it.

Good point.
Does anyone have any idea on what basis they ban the counties or do not allow the counties. It surely is not about legality.

What is this or this is the answer that I just asked above?

I do not think that this limitations were adopted because of BTC is illegal in these countries. Ukraine for example is in this list. I can not say that BTC is illegal in this country))) It is not forbidden. But there was some decision from administration of Bittrex to include Ukraine to this list. Strange and not pleasant news. It was not a good surprise to learn it. But thank you for sharing, will keep it in mind. And hope Binance, Kucoin and others will not follow their example.

It's not about what those countries think about bitcoin, otherwise, you would see Bolivia or Ecuador or Morroco on that list.
Most likely they got that list from the FATF AML deficient countries to avoid any headaches with authorities and banks.

But pretty weird, I don't see North Korea or Iran on that list.