Bancor restricts US Citizens from accessing its platform
- Presently, Bancor is handling only $1.6 million in trading volumes.
- Binance and Bittrex, among many other exchanges, have also decided to ban the US.
Bancor, an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange, has reportedly banned US citizens from accessing its website. They said:
“Beginning July 8, 2019 (9:00 AM EST) US citizens, domiciliaries or users from US IPs will no longer be able to use Bancor’s web application to convert tokens...We would like to clarify that this functionality will be blocked to users accessing the website, which offers an interface to blockchain activity. As the Bancor Liquidity Network is a collection of smart contracts on the blockchain, and a non-custodial system, we cannot restrict users from accessing the blockchain itself. This cannot be blocked.”
The decision taken by Bancor is quite questionable as their website can still be accessed using a VPN and under other different domain names by cutting off the IP restrictions and mirroring the website. However, raw usage of this system would probably be difficult for most.
In spite of knowing that, Bancor said:
“In light of increased regulatory uncertainty, we believe that restricting US-based users from executing conversions via our web interface is the most judicious decision for all members of Bancor’s ecosystem at this time.”
Binance and Bittrex among many other exchanges have also decided to ban the US after they were sent notices by SEC. Presently, Bancor is controlling only $1.6 million in trading volumes, of which close to $1.2 million is just in BNT/ETH.
Author
Rajarshi Mitra
Independent Analyst
Rajarshi entered the blockchain space in 2016. He is a blockchain researcher who has worked for Blockgeeks and has done research work for several ICOs. He gets regularly invited to give talks on the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.
