A List of Coins Being Geoblocked in the US

The following coins are all potentially going to be geoblocked by US exchanges. Meaning US customers won’t be able to trade these coins on major exchanges.

Since there is no official list, I’ll stead provide a list of coins that are currently geoblocked or will be geoblocked by Bittrex and Poloniex (geoblocked means US customers can’t trade them on the exchange).

The reason I’m using these exchanges to create the list is that Poloniex and Bittrex were the first to clearly announce geoblocked coins.

It is likely other exchanges will block trading for these same coins (or at least many of the same coins). However, there is no way to know for sure, as the blocking isn’t mandated, it is being done as a safe habor due to recent SEC lawsuits (see details below).

As we get more clarity I’ll update the list.

TIP: Please note not every coin below will necessarily be geoblocked for US customers by all exchanges. Also, users can still use wallets of any coin currently trading on Bittrex or Binance that is geoblocked, they just can’t trade on those exchanges after a set date. For more trading options, it is worth noting that DEXs, KuCoin, Huobi, Kraken, Bitfinex, and more still offer trading of some of these alts.

Poloniex geoblocks: ARDR, BCN, DCR, GAME, GAS, LSK, NXT, OMNI, and REP

Bittrex geoblocks:

ADT CMCT GO MFT QRL XEL
AMP DNT GTO MOBI QTUM XNK
BAY DTA HYDRO NLC2 RFR
BCPT ENG IHT NMR STORJ
BLOCK FCT ION PRO STORM
BOXX FLDC LBA PTOY SWT
ADX CVC INCNT NGC PMA SPC
AID DCT IOP NXT POT SRN
ANT DMT LRC OCN POWR UP
BFT EDG MCO OMG RCN UPP
BKX GNO MET PAL RLC VEE
BLT GUP MLN PART RVR VIB
BNT HMQ MOC PAY SNT WINGS

NOTE: All coins that trade on Binance only (for example as you can see in the list below) will also effectively be geoblocked starting Sept 12th 2019.

NOTE: US customers are also losing access to Bancor starting in July.

NOTE: Below is a useful Twitter post from “Goomba” about which coins you can still trade on which exchanges. The list is useful, but a little misleading as the Goomba incorrectly noted Bittrex as trading some coins which it actually never allowed US customers to trade (BTT for example has never been tradable in the US on Bittrex).

A list of Coins being blocked (please note some of these Bittrex ones are also blocked).

Why is this happening: I wrote a whole article on “US exchanges geoblocking US customers,” but in short the SEC sent out a warning on July 25, 2017 via the “Investor Bulletin: Initial Coin Offerings” and every ICO launched after that is in jeopardy from the SEC, so exchanges that want to safely interact with US customers are “geoblocking” US customers and cutting off trading from many ICO tokens in one way or another (with most having a US exchange and an International exchange; like Bittrex currently does or Binance is planning to).

On July 25, 2017, the SEC issued a Report of Investigation under Section 21(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 describing an SEC investigation of The DAO, a virtual organization, and its use of distributed ledger or blockchain technology to facilitate the offer and sale of DAO Tokens to raise capital. The Commission applied existing U.S. federal securities laws to this new paradigm, determining that DAO Tokens were securities.  The Commission stressed that those who offer and sell securities in the U.S. are required to comply with federal securities laws, regardless of whether those securities are purchased with virtual currencies or distributed with blockchain technology.

Author: Thomas DeMichele

Thomas DeMichele has been working in the cryptocurrency information space since 2015 when CryptocurrencyFacts.com was created. He has contributed to MakerDAO, Alpha Bot (the number one crypto bot on Discord),...

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