BitMEX moves deadline for user verification

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BitMEX leadership has confidence in the future of the BitMEX exchange. Despite the recent trouble that the United States government has given BitMEX by way of two lawsuits, 100x Group’s chief commercial officer Ben Radclyffe and chief compliance officer Malcolm Wright are taking steps to make BitMEX compliant. 

Recent events–the charges pressed against BitMEX by the CFTC and the DOJ–have prompted BitMEX to accelerate its user-verification program. The program’s deadline, which was initially February 12, 2021, has been moved to November 5th, 2020–just two weeks from the day BitMEX announced the change in deadline.

The program requires all BitMEX users to verify their identity by November 5th, otherwise, they can not increase their positions or open new positions. On December 4th, all users should have completed the verification process, but if they have not, then they will no longer be able to withdraw funds from their account.

BitMEX says that after December 4th, “If there are remaining open positions on unverified accounts, we will review these on 4 December 2020 and communicate directly to users holding these to facilitate an orderly closing of these positions.”

The road to compliance

“The industry’s KYC-free days are coming to a close,” said  Wright; which is a bit strange considering that there were never ‘KYC-free’ days in the industry. However, there was a crypto-crime cartel that blatantly ignored the existing legal infrastructure that applied to currency exchanges and marketplaces.  

But the team at BitMEX and its parent company, 100x group know that they can no longer operate in the grey economy and that they must comply now or face the threat of a government cease and desist. When it comes to KYC and AML compliance, Radclyffe said, 

“This is absolutely the way the industry is heading as we have seen from recent events… I have been spearheading conversations with regulators on how the industry can comply with what has been set out with the FATF guidelines…100x is going to lead the industry in best practices.”

 

Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groups—from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, and Ethereum—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.

 

See also: The Regulation of Digital Assets & Digital Asset Businesses Panel at CG Live

 

https://youtu.be/FAEoXeN0b8M?t=18778