Abra App restricts services to US users for regulatory reasons

Abra's Crypto Investment app was forced to make service changes to US customers due to "uncertainty and regulatory restrictions" in the country.

In a blog update Thursday, the company said the adjustments came "in order to continue to comply and cooperate with US regulations as it currently exists."

So, what does it mean for the Abra users involved? The firm says:

"Specifically, for Abra users in the United States, we need to make some changes to the system around our contract-based intelligent synthetic badets. As part of this effort, we migrate all synthetic badets to a native hosted portfolio solution. On Abra, they are defined as anything other than Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). "

The "synthetic good" is the means used by Abra to offer users exposure to cryptocurrency price fluctuations without having to keep crypto. For some cryptos, users can only make deposits into the application via a US bank account, an American Express card, a bitcoin, a cash bitcoin or a litecoin. These repositories can then be converted into the synthetic version.

The details of the modifications are as follows:

As of August 29, US users will no longer be able to hold Qtum (QTUM), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), EOS, OmiseGo (OMG) and status (SNT) will have to exchange or withdraw their holdings of these badets from the application at 11:59 pm EST ( 3:50 UTC) on this date.

If users do not do this before the deadline, the badets will automatically be converted to bitcoins, the firm said.

New York customers will also be affected and will only be able to hold bitcoin, ether, litecoin and native bitcoin on the Abra app. All synthetic badets must be exchanged or withdrawn within the same period of time as the badets remaining after this date must be converted into bitcoins.

In addition, New York app users will no longer be able to use ACH bank accounts, wire transfers, or American Express cards for deposits and withdrawals after August 29th.

Users outside the United States will not be affected by the changes. The private keys for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin or ethereum owned by the company will continue to be held by US users after the changes, the company said.

It is unclear how temporary visitors to the United States could be affected. CoinDesk has invited your comments and will update this article if an answer is received.

Abra image courtesy of the company