BitStamp: Unverified Accounts to be Closed, Balances to Regulators

BitStamp announced on their blog that accounts remaining unverified will be closed and have their balances turned over to regulators. BitStamp initially implemented their verification policy in September of 2013 and insists they can not allow accounts that do not comply with their anti-money laundering and know your customer policies to trade or receive other services from BitStamp including withdrawals in either Bitcoin or any other method. Their announcement:

Final notice to unverified account holders

Dear Bitstamp clients,

Despite being notified of change in our Verification Policy more than a year ago on 4th September 2013, some accounts remain unverified.

Bitstamp cannot allow unverified accounts to trade or offer any other services, as doing so would violate our AML and KYC policies. Read our AML policy here.

We kindly ask all unverified account holders with a balance to get verified within 28 days of this announcement.

Failure to do so constitutes a breach of our Agreement and failure to remedy that breach. This will automatically result in the following: all unverified accounts holding a balance will be terminated, access rights will be removed, and the holders of these accounts will no longer be considered Bitstamp customers.

Any remaining balances will be subject to immediate seizure by and forfeiture to regulatory authorities.

Please take these simple verification steps immediately. You can verify your Bitstamp account here or contact our support at support@bitstamp.net

Best regards,
Bitstamp Team

There are already reports of users lamenting balances on BitStamp which may become unrecoverable in light of this announcement.

One thought on “BitStamp: Unverified Accounts to be Closed, Balances to Regulators

  1. Unless Slovenia has a very different legal system from the rest of the continent, Bitstamp is not entitled to withhold customer funds. Bitstamp may have unilaterally changed the terms of service to require verification. Nevertheless, if a customer breaches these terms, it must be allowed to withdraw funds. Bitstamp would only be entitled to offset to the extent that a failure to verify caused damages.

Leave a Reply to Zeke Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>