Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Out of cycle update a Kraken crackdown cryptotalk FM. My name is Lyster, I'm your host. Are you wondering what's going on with Kraken? I don't have answers for you. I can give you what I know, but I don't have direct answers for you. And I can speculate as to the route. I got an email not long ago and it said we're changing our, basically the processor that does payments. I didn't think anything of it because it's whatever, right? And it didn't say they're cutting service, it didn't say they're doing this. It just said they're changing providers. You need to accept these new terms by June. I think it's June 6, they said, I ignored the first 1 second one. I said, okay, fine, just to get you mother fathers to leave me alone. I clicked it. It took me to a bad place as not malicious, but just their links, they don't know what they're doing with emails. So okay, I log into the account and then I get a prompt that says, you need to accept the new terms. And I read through the new terms and I want to share that because that may be enlightening to some people that are using Kraken. Some history. Kraken was getting attacked by the SEc. Kraken claims that these recent changes are not related to the SEC attacks, that they're just doing it on their own. I I'm questioning that, but fine. And if you're not in Kraken, Kraken uses payword ventures for their pay ins and payouts. So when you do a wire transfer or in or out, it's payword ventures that does it. I don't think they use them for the Ach side. They might, I don't ever use Ach because it's stupid. But the wire is payword ventures, and I know this because I've used Kraken on a irregular basis. And in the terms, all it basically said was that the payment processors was going to be different for the United States versus other countries. So they essentially, I think it was a payword change that spurred this. And as part of the payword change, there's like three or four different entities now. They're all payword ultimately, but the reason they had to have you accept terms is so that the entity that's going to be sending you money is a, it's payword something or other. So it's a transparent change for those of the United States. But then there were recent announcements and it was happened over a couple of weeks and I didn't think anything of it because there was no big, you know, crazy nonsense. But Maine and some other states, apparently Kraken was pulling out business, telling people and they were sending emails. And this again is the reason you need to stop ducking emails because emails are beautiful. They're amazing. It's how you learn about these things. If you're an affected customer and say what you will about Kraken, they're actually very good about targeted emails. They target to the customers who actually need to read receive it. So anybody who is a resident of these states, they got an email telling me, you need to pull your money out or it's going to be frozen because they're pulling out. Business. People didn't understand what that means. The state, they still require registration for these crypto exchanges. They can't just run Wal wall West like they please. They got to at least register as a business in the state. And then there's money services, registrations and financial and tax submissions and all these things that in some states they have to do. In some states they don't. The most notorious states I can think of are New York, Hawaii, Nevada for sure, and Maine to a lesser degree, New York. They were the ones that were blocking shiv for the longest freaking time. Nevada, they were the ones Robin Hood just basically said, screw you, we're not doing any business at all in this state for the longest time until I left. Of course, this main one was kind of weird. I didn't expect that one and there was a couple of other ones. But the point is, you may not have known that the exchanges, they have to do some basic level of registration to conduct business to the residents in those states so they can stay above the law. So even though it's not a regulated industry, there's still some fundamental registrations to have to occur. And based on some of the press statements Kraken put out, they found that some of these requirements that were being imposed upon them by certain states was a bit too onerous for them to support. As a result, they decided to go ahead and yank it. I'm not going to share the quotes because it's dry. Ultimately, they just said this is not related to the SEC business. It's just that in certain states it's not, it's not worth it to do it at this time. We're not closing your accounts. We're basically putting stuff on hold. That's why it's a freeze and they're telling you to get out and you may not know that's why I'm sharing the word myself. But they're holding it with the hopes that they can turn it back on later. See that's different than Robin Hood. Robin Hood basically just said screw you and left people hanging high and dry. And I was really pissed off when that happened and the whole shib in New York, that was another thing that pissed people off and I'm telling them, well you live in New York. That's what it is. Anyway, so that's the big business on Kraken. If you were curious about it I do recommend you check out Kraken.com. Log in if you are affected by anything. You're going to get that alert telling you to accept the new terms. I know terms are very dry and annoying to read through and they are pretty freaking long, but it's very enlightening as to what's changing and whether you are going to be affected at some point in the future by this business.
