Abra announced the decision through a blog post that they will adjust its offering in the United States in an effort to “continue to be compliant and cooperative with US regulations as they currently exist.” This means Abra users in the US will see the firm restrict their services.

The firm said:

“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).”

The synthetic asset is a medium of providing users with exposure to the movements of cryptocurrency prices, without them having to hold the actual crypto. For cryptos that only make deposits into the app (either through a U.S.-based bank account, an American Express card, bitcoin, bitcoin cash or litecoin) these deposits can also be converted in the synthetic version.

More info on the changes

Sequel to the announcement, US users will only be able to hold QTUM, bitcoin gold (BTG), Status (SNT) and OmiseGO (OMG) on the platform till August 29. Holders of these cryptos are advised to withdraw their funds before the said date, as any remaining balances will be automatically converted to BTC.

Therefore, US users can only hold native bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash on the app. Customers outside the US will not be affected by these changes. The private keys for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin or ethereum held with the firm will continue to be held by US users after the changes. There would also be clarifications concerning the effects on temporary visitors to the US.

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