Tag: kraken

The Curious Case of Binance, Kraken Disappearing from Apple India’s App Store: Details

Apple’s App Store, as of Wednesday, January 10 is not showing a number of foreign crypto exchanges like Binance and Kraken in India. Several members of India’s crypto community posted screenshots of their Apple Store searches on X, showing no results on the App Store. The development comes at a time when the government of India is laying mega focus on making sure that all crypto firms operating in the country, are registered with the concerned authorities.

The overnight disappearence of these foreign exchanges from App Store comes around a week after the Indian government issued notices seeking updates on their legal compliance statuses. At the time, the Indian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) had urged to government to ban these crypto exchanges until they show how compliant they are with India’s crypto laws deployed so far.

Members of India’s crypto community are actively discussing on social media reasons and warnings behind the disappearance of these apps from Apple’s ecosystem in India. Along with Binance and Kraken, App Store searches on Mexc, Huobi, and Gate.io are also not shoing desired results.

The move seems to be a part of the regulatory efforts that India is undertaking in regards to the crypto sector, aiming to to address concerns related to tax evasion.

After India imposed taxes on crypto incomes last year, many Indian traders decided to move their deposits to offshore international exchanges. Indians have to pay a 30 percent tax on all crypto earnings and one percent TDS on all crypto transactions. As soon as these laws went live in 2022, Indian crypto exchanges recorded a nosedive in trading volumes.

The government now wishes to narrow the margin of crypto misuse for criminal activities and silently promote the use of native exchanges.

“By asking offshore exchanges to register with the FIU-IND, the idea is to increase compliance with Indian laws on taxation, Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and KYC norms. This will help create a level playing field between Indian and offshore exchanges, fortify compliance guardrails and also enhance consumer protection. This is also better for consumer protection in India,” Ashish Singhal, Co-founder and Group CEO, PeepalCo told Gadgets360.

As of now, none of the affected international exchanges have responded to this development.

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IT Ministry to Block Binance, Kraken, More Crypto Websites After FIU Issues Show Cause Notice

As part of compliance action against the offshore entities, Financial Intelligence Unit India (FIU IND) has issued show cause notices to nine offshore Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers (VDA SPs) under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

According to an official release from the Ministry of Finance, “Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers (VDA SPs) were brought into the ambit of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism (AML-CFT) framework under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PML) Act in March 2023.”

“As part of compliance action against the offshore entities, Financial Intelligence Unit India (FIU IND) has issued compliance Show Cause Notices to the following nine offshore Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers (VDA SPs) under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA),” it said.

As per the release, the nine offshore Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers are Binance, Kucoin, Huobi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global and Bitfinex.

“Director FIU IND has written to the Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block the URLs of said entities that are operating illegally without complying with the provisions of the PML Act in India,” said the release.

VDA SPs operating in India (both offshore and onshore) and engaged in activities like exchange between virtual digital assets and fiat currencies, transfer of virtual digital assets, safekeeping or administration of virtual digital assets or instruments enabling control over virtual digital assets, etc. are required to be registered with FIU IND as reporting entities and comply with the set of obligations as mandated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002, it said.

The obligation is activity-based and is not contingent on physical presence in India.

“The regulation places reporting, record-keeping, and other obligations on the VDA SPs under the PML Act, which also includes registration with the FIU IND,” said the release.

To date, 31 VDA SPs have registered with FIU IND. However, several offshore entities, though catering to a substantial part of Indian users, were not getting registered and coming under the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Financing of Terrorism (CFT) frameworks.

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Crypto Trading Platform Kraken Sued by US SEC, Company CEO Denies Allegations

Kraken, the crypto trading platform based in the US, has found itself under legal scanner in the US. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US has sued Kraken for operating its business without having registered it officially. The next few days could be tumultuous for the international crypto sector with this probe being initiated against Kraken and with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao admitted to having flouted US’ anti-money laundering laws this week.

In Kraken’s case, the SEC believes that the trading platform has minted millions of dollars between 2018 and 2023 — all of which classify as illegal earnings.

“The SEC alleges that Kraken intertwines the traditional services of an exchange, broker, dealer, and clearing agency without having registered any of those functions with the Commission as required by law,” said an official statement from the SEC.

The SEC is concerned that Kraken’s failure to register its operations kept its users unprotected against market risks. In addition, Kraken also kept users from market protections like inspection by the SEC and safeguards against conflicts of interest.

“We allege that Kraken made a business decision to reap hundreds of millions of dollars from investors rather than coming into compliance with the securities laws. That decision resulted in a business model rife with conflicts of interest that placed investors’ funds at risk,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

Meanwhile, Dave Ripley, the CEO of Kraken has denied SEC’s allegations via a post on X. Ripley also claimed that there is no clear path to register with the SEC, calling its allegations ‘factually incorrect’.

Team Kraken has also posted an official blog post stating that it strongly disagrees with the SEC and that the laws of the US are on its side.

The SEC, for now, has filed an official complaint against Kraken in a federal district court in San Francisco, US. It now seeks a remedy that would restrain other crypto players to do so. In addition, the SEC is also demanding disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest along with penalties.

Founded in the US back in 2011, Kraken claims to be serving to over 10 million users from different parts of the world.

In the last day, the value of Kraken’s native Basic Attention Token (BAT) dropped by 6.40 percent. It is currently trading at the price point of 0.2034 (roughly Rs. 16.95) as per CoinMarketCap.

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