California based Crypto wallet firm Abra will restrict several services for American users from this August.
As per the latest blog post on July 25, Abra will have to implement some system modifications “in an effort to continue to be compliant and cooperative with US regulations as they currently exist.” Moreover, American users will no longer be able to various cryptocurrencies along with EOS (EOS).
How will the latest change affect Abra Users? Regarding this, the firm says:
“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 Abra's way of offering its users with vulnerability to the moments of cryptocurrency prices, without allowing them to hold the actual crypto. For several cryptos, users are allowed to make deposits into the app through U.S.-based bank account, American Express card, bitcoin, bitcoin cash or litecoin.
From August 29, American users will not be entitled to hold Qtum (QTUM), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), EOS, OmiseGo (OMG) and status (SNT). Users have to compulsory exchange or withdraw any holdings of those assets from the app by 11:59 p.m. EST (03:50 UTC) on that date. The firm stated all the remaining balances in those assets after August 29 will be automatically converted to Bitcoin.
Users belonging to the New York state will only be able to hold bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash on Abra's App after August 29. Moreover, Abra users can't use ACH or wire transfers, or American Express Cards for deposits and withdrawals.
Also, the migration process is anticipated to be constant for most of the U.S. users and will enable to continue managing operations with no interruption. But, this process might result in some operations to be inaccessible for a few minutes.
Users living outside the U.S are not any impact from these changes. US users will be able to hold the private keys of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum even after the changes.