Cryptocurrency investment app Abra has revealed it’s set to restrict services for users in the United States over continued regulatory uncertainty.
According to a blog post the company published. It’ll adjust its offering in the country 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 its services.
The blog post reads:
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).
As such, users in the US will no longer be able to hold QTUM, bitcoin gold (BTG), Status (SNT) and OmiseGO (OMG) on the platform after August 29. Those who have positions in these cryptocurrencies are advised to withdraw their funds before said date, as any remaining balances will be automatically converted to BTC.
Those in New York will be more affected than others, as they will no longer to able to use wire transfers, bank Automated Clearing House (ACH), Or American Express cards to deposit and withdraw funds from Abra’s app.
Users outside of the country will reportedly not be affected by the changes. The move comes months after Abra launched a service that allows users to gain exposure to some of the most popular stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world using bitcoin.
The service also allows users to gain exposure to indexes like the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000. This won’t, however, give them ownership of the assets themselves, meaning those who use the app to invest won’t, for example, receive dividends from stocks.
