Dang Dan, sure would have been nice of you to provide advance notice of this change, rather than spring it on us all of the sudden like this.
So much for disruptive technology. New name: acquiescence to demand. I thought Blocktrades was registered in Cayman Islands or some foreign jurisdiction not under the thumb of US hegemony.
I don't really see what the difference would be in advance notice in this case. And really, it's not like we had much notice about it either, we literally put these changes in place in a matter of days to comply to the new requirements as soon as possible.
We are registered in Cayman Islands, but we do have US customers, and the US enforces its regulations against foreign companies that deal with US customers.
I agree this seems like a very questionable practice, but it is what it is, and you can see how these things play out now with the actions by NY regulators and previously the CFTC against Bitfinex.
Anyways, I don't really think our service itself is "disruptive": it's just a service to make it easier to trade crypto without as much risk. I think that the term "disruptive"should be reserved for blockchain technology itself and other related possible things we may see in the future from the crypto community. We plan to remain heavily involved in the technology area: our web site is only one part of our overall business.
So these changes would not be necessary if you did not serve US customers? Do you expect other jurisdictions to require such changes?
Thanks!
Yes, that's correct, it wouldn't be necessary now if we didn't also serve US customers. So one long term option might be to split into two different companies.
But a recent report published by ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) suggests they are considering somewhat similar requirements in 2020. It's hard to say how these things will go.