Abra, an all-in-one cryptocurrency wallet and exchange, announced on Thursday it is restricting services to U.S. users due to regulatory issues in the country. Explaining why the platform made the changes, the Abra team stated:
“[Due to the regulatory situations], specifically, for Abra users in the United States is that we have to make some system modifications around our smart contract based synthetic assets. As a part of this effort we are migrating any synthetic assets to a native hosted wallet solution. On Abra, these are defined as anything other than Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).”
Abra’s team also noted that for most U.S. users, the migration will be “seamless” and will allow them to continue managing and transacting with most of their assets from the Abra app without interruption. However, during the migration, some assets may be unavailable to use (exchange, send, and withdraw) for a few minutes while the migration takes place. The migration will impact some segments of U.S. users more directly, such as the following:
- U.S. users will no longer be eligible to hold QTUM, BTG, EOS, OMG, SNT after August 29th. U.S. users holding positions in these crypto assets will have to exchange or withdraw their investments from Abra by 11:59 PM EST on August 29th. After that date, any remaining balances in those assets will be converted to Bitcoin in the app.
- After August 29th, New York residents will only be able to hold Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on Abra. New York residents will need to transfer or sell any synthetic holdings by 11:59 PM EST on August 29th. After that date, any remaining balances in those assets will be shown as Bitcoin in the app. Additionally, Abra users from New York will no longer be able to use bank ACH, wire or American express card for deposit/withdraw after August 29th.
The team went on to add:
“We are proud to be, along with many others in our industry, pushing the frontiers of financial innovation to drive global financial inclusion. However, operating in the United States has become increasingly complex and challenging. Unfortunately, we believe this to be the best course of action at this time. We hope, and look forward to bringing our full offering back to US users in the near future.”