https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/227October 16, 2017
This message is further to our announcement of August 11, 2017, with respect to terminating our business with U.S. individual customers. As indicated in the announcement, we are terminating trading, deposits, and withdrawal functionality for U.S. individual customers by no later than November 9, 2017. 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.
All U.S. individual users must make arrangements to withdraw their Digital Tokens by November 9th.
U.S. individuals holding Recovery Right Tokens (RRTs), if any, which relate to the exchange of now-defunct BFX tokens to equity in iFinex Inc., may, starting on October 27, 2017, sell all of their RRTs on the exchange, if they so elect. This is an exception to the general terms of use for RRTs. U.S. individuals are not permitted to buy RRTs during this time period. All terms and conditions relating to the sale of any RRTs remain in full force and effect and are deemed to apply to the sale of any RRTs by U.S. individuals or otherwise. Any RRTs remaining in the hands of U.S. individual verified customers after the November 9th deadline may be sold through Bitfinex on an OTC basis through special arrangement with us.
WOW!!!!!
I initially thought that Bitfinex were going to restrict USA customers from fiat bank encounters and a few other asset trading restrictions - yet this announcement appears to be a complete severance of USA customers from any kind of service on their platform... ... seemingly too much liability for Bitfinex to have USA exposure... would be a prudent move for them, but gonna screw around a lot of USA folks who are currently using their platform.. and had wanted access to some of that Hong Kong based market (arbitrage or whatever).
Get your coins off exchanges JJG. Stop playing with fire.
Hahahahaha.. Thanks for your concern... I understand that you are more exchange averse than me...
I am not going to get my coins off of all exchanges, but surely I got to work towards setting up a plan to remove all of my coins from bitfinex in the next 3.5 weeks... and they had been my go to exchange for alt coins, so currently I gotta figure out what to do with the BCH, ETH, ETC, LTC, Monero and dollars that I hold on their platform.. whether to liquidate all of it or just move it to wallets? Surely I cannot move the dollars - so I gotta probably buy bitcoin or some other alt with the dollars before I move it. Most likely I will buy bitcoin because I don't feel too comfortable having my value in alts... and if I get stuck, I would rather be stuck mostly in bitcoin than some of those other ones.
Ya, Bitfinex was my go-to exchange due to being able to margin fund. I've made over $25k just in interest off of a small portion of money I cashed out this summer (though had I kept it in BTC it would be a lot more). I was hoping that income would be what I would live off of when I retire...the returns via margin funding averaged around 20-30% APY.
Yep... I made some good money there too, including recently beginning to loan out some my BTC, and there certainly has been some decent innovations, whether margin trading or other creative tools that they have employed.
I actually don't do any margin trading, yet the loaning process seems to be a fairly risk free way to profit off of folks who do.
The wording is U.S. individual customers. I wonder if it means U.S. residents or U.S. citizens. I know the SEC sees the two differently which is likely their main concern.
I get the sense that Bitfinex is being somewhat comprehensive in their scope of who is restricted, and they are talking about both kinds of individuals (residents and citizens), and probably the only way around the matter is if you were some kind of qualified institutional investor.
I did send a support ticket to attempt to confirm myself specifically, but I doubt that I am going to find out anything different from how I interpret the seemingly comprehensive severance of USA liabilities in terms of individuals whether residents or citizens.
I already cashed out on that platform but I'd have to convert to BTC then convert back to USD on a US exchange, I hope the IRS doesn't treat that as capital gains twice. I'd keep it in BTC but the deed is done and I'll be paying my extortion money to the war lords anyway so I may as well have it in something that I can make some safe investments.
I am going to try NOT to allow factors external from me to cause me to reallocate. In other words, I want to control my own allocation, to the extent that remains feasible. In other words, I am going through the process of incrementally converting all my Bitfinex dollars into bitcoin; however, whenever my buy order executes on bitfinex, I have another sell order set up on one of my other exchanges, and in the end, there is nearly a wash - and I set these up in such a way that they are largely selling the same amount of BTC that I bought on Bitfinex and covering the fees too.. so that I am not losing out because of fees to maintain more or less my previously decided allocation amounts.
I suspect though that many US customers will need to cash out their USD to BTC to get it off platform as well...could push the price up quite a bit.
I am thinking the same, and that there might end up being some arbitrage opportunities created because of the likely imbalance that is created, but I suspect that my own situation is going to resolve earlier.. I mean it does not seem to likely to take very long to get mine sorted out because i already started... and I am making decent progress due to volatility from today, and I expect continued volatility in the coming days (perhaps)
It's a shame, at my current funding rate I'm getting a 115% yearly interest (due to the price jump). Try to get any returns like that on any other investment (outside of the crypto-world
).
Yep.... gonna have to become a dual citizen, perhaps? And then register under another citizenship? or just forego, such participation because not going to expect the USA govt to become more reasonable in the next 10 years or so, right? The USA govt is likely to only become more unreasonable the more it puts itself into financial peril.