01-13-2018: Metropolitan Bank Holding Corp Halted all Cryptocurrency Wire Transfers

Daily Crypto - Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum, Altcoin & Digital Cryptocurrency World News

Over the past 24 hours, the Ethereum blockchain helped transfer just over $23bn. This is almost as much as Bitcoin, BitcoinCash, Litecoin, Dash, BTG, and ETC combined. Ethereum’s value transfer doesn’t pertain just to ETH transactions, it also includes all of the ERC20 tokens issued on the blockchain (newsbtc).

Kraken, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency exchange, has resumed service after scheduled maintenance that was supposed to take two hours but instead took two days. The unexpectedly long downtime agitated many users, since not only trading but also withdrawals were unavailable for the period, during which coin prices dropped on bearish news coming out of South Korea. The San Francisco based exchange will be waiving trading fees for all its clients through the end of the month, it said in a blog post published Saturday. However, the waiver does not apply to non-margin trades. In the blog post, the company reassured clients that their funds were kept safe during the incident stating: “We apologize for the uncertainty our downtime has caused. The scheduled downtime was to replace our old trading engine with a brand new trading engine – an improvement that customers have long asked for and that we have long been working hard on” (coindesk).

Bitcoin investors in the UK have reportedly been facing issues with acquiring mortgages with their profits, as Banks refuse or are unsure how to deal with funds derived from cryptocurrency. It appears as though investors could potentially have trouble when it comes to securing a mortgage with their Bitcoin money. Some banks in the UK appear to be showing a reluctance to deal with Bitcoin profits, especially when it comes to providing audit trails. Another complicating factor appears to be a lack of understanding of cryptocurrency in the mortgage industry in general (bitcoinist).

The South Korean government has announced that cryptocurrency traders will be fined if they do not convert from existing virtual accounts, which allows for anonymous trading, to real-name accounts. Regardless of their service levels to crypto exchanges, banks have been ordered to implement the new system this month as planned. Currently, crypto traders are able to trade anonymously by using virtual accounts. However, the authorities have banned banks from issuing new ones and mandated them to install the new system “that ensures only real-name bank accounts and matching accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges to be used for deposits and withdrawals” (10ztalk).

And lastly, Metropolitan Bank Holding Corp has halted all cryptocurrency related wire transfers, effective immediately, per a report from Fortune. The information came from statements by Metropolitan customers who were informed that the bank would be “ceasing all international crypto-related wire transfers.” The decision is highly significant for the cryptocurrency industry as Metropolitan Bank has earned a reputation for being Bitcoin-friendly, which will likely impact its stock price. Metropolitan is reportedly one of the main service providers for US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (cointelegraph).

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