Crypto Derivatives Exchange Leaves EU For Panama Under New KYC Laws

The Netherlands-based crypto derivatives exchange leaves the European Union for Panama as the latest crypto news show. The main mission, rules and aim for it now lie to changing its Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements.

Deribit BV is responsible for the Deribit.com exchange. The exchange noted that it will officially delegate the trading platform to its daughter company, DRB Panama Inc. on February 10, 2020, as a January 9 statement from Deribit showed.

As the crypto derivatives exchange leaves EU for Panama, it raised a lot of questions. However, the exchange said that they decided to do the transfer based on the likelihood of tightening the regulatory demands in the Netherlands. This resulted from similar demands seen across the EU as an official statement noted.

These requirements are known as SAMLD and pertain to the crypto operations. They might require Deribit customer to produce significant personal data in order to participate on the platform. The statement read the following:

“We believe that crypto markets should be freely available to most, and the new regulations would put too high barriers for the majority of traders, both — regulatory and cost-wise.”

As the Deribit cryptocurrency derivatives exchange leaves the European Union, its statement also noted a change in the terms and privacy policy as part of the upcoming move. The officials from the exchange also mentioned changes to the current KYC expectations, expressing plans to use verifications and the payment company Jumio as well as the software company Chainalysis in the process.

Right now, Deribit will host multiple customer activity levels on the exchange which will be based on certain KYC elements, as per the company’s statement.

Meanwhile, in June 2019 Binance announced that it wwould kick US customers off its Malta-based exchange in September. It decided to set up a different platform with fewer capabilities for US participants. The exchange giant OKEx also touts Malta as its current headquarters – showing that it is interested in the lightly populated vacation hub which is known as a crypto haven. What’s interesting is that Malta is also party to EU AML regulation, which may prove to be a strain for exchanges based in the country.

Meanwhile, the latest Bitcoin news show that the price of BTC is now at $7,780 with another failure to break the $8,000 levels.