The company stated that the initiative was taken “very reluctantly.”
Uphold, ​​a crypto trading platform offering users the ability to purchase and sell assets, has announced that it would be withdrawing from Venezuela, citing the “increasing complexity of complying with U.S. sanctions.”
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According to the official announcement issued on June 23, users leveraging Uphold for trading should withdraw all of their funds from the platform as quickly as possible. The company also mentioned that trading services will be available until July 31, whereas all user accounts will be fully unavailable starting from September 30. Uphold added in the official note:
"Venezuela was one of the first countries to embrace Uphold and we love serving our customers there. We are taking this step very reluctantly."
The team behind Uphold recently mentioned that “Uphold has to comply with U.S. sanction programs administered by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), including those against the government of Venezuela, state-owned entities and their employees.” This means that the trading platform won’t be able to hand over funds to users in Venezuela.
However, residents of the country might see Uphold coming back as soon as “a change in applicable law or specific permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)” will be granted.
Back in 2019, the US government and former President Donald Trump imposed a ban against Venezuela on transactions with organizations and people living in the United States. However, last month, the current US President Joe Biden started relieving some of the sanctions.
Currently, Venezuela is considered the leading Bitcoin (BTC) trading country in Latin America, while according to some data, between June 20-26, nearly $5M was exchanged.
It seems as though Venezuela is keen on regulating the use of cryptocurrencies. For instance, earlier this year, the government issued a bill, indicating that financial institutions offering services through crypto or any other foreign money outside the country’s banking system will be obliged to pay from 2% to 20% tax on each transaction.
