Stringent EU Policy Forces Simplecoin and ChopCoin to Shut Down

In less than four days after Bottle Pay announced that it would be shutting down operations due to its inability to comply with the stringent Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations established by the European Union, two crypto-related firms made a similar move.   

According to official announcements published by the firms, mining pool, Simplecoin, and online crypto gaming platform, ChopCoin noted that the proposed AML rule by the EU has turned out to be a curse rather than a blessing. 

The new AML policy as it stands would be a hindrance to their operations, and they would rather shut down operations before the January 10 deadline the EU gave member states to adopt the rule. 

Simplecoin, which is currently operating in the Netherlands, stated that the new AML policy would subject the firm to several AML and KYC requirements, including prompting users to complete the KYC procedures, among others.  

Per the closure notice, Simplecoin has exhausted all available alternatives that will not require it to compromise users’ privacy and has chosen to shut down on January 1, 2020. 

Users of the platform are urged to withdraw their funds by December 20 as the wallet and mining services will be discontinued, while users will be allowed to gain access to the basic version of the platform where they can delete their data from the platform before January 1, 2020.  

On the other hand, Chopcoin stated that since its inception, it has tried to operate within the vision of the crypto ecosystem, “unfortunately, regulatory concerns and rejecting to force KYC on our users force us to close chop,” the firm added.

As per Chopcoin’s announcement, users are required to withdraw their funds by December 19 and have promised to delete users’ data before finally shutting operations on December 31. 

So far, the EU’s new AML policy does not seem favorable to small crypto-related firms. 

As earlier reported, decentralized exchange, CryptoBridge, also shut down its operations due to increased regulatory scrutiny on the crypto industry.