Revolut To Halt US Crypto Services Amidst Regulatory Crackdown

UK fintech start-up Revolut said it would stop offering access to cryptocurrencies in the US, citing regulatory and market uncertainties.

The move comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) has filed several lawsuits against major cryptocurrency firms such as Coinbase in recent months in an effort to bring them under the remit of existing securities laws.

Revolut, based in London and licensed and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania in the European Union, offers banking, currency exchange, payment and other financial services.

The company began offering cryptocurrency services in 2017, beginning with crypto trading.

‘Uncertainties’

The company said that from 2 September it would no longer sell cryptocurrencies to customers in the US, and from 3 October buying, selling and holding crypto would be disabled altogether for US customers.

It said the move would affect less than 1 percent of its worldwide customers.

“As a result of the evolving regulatory environment and the uncertainties around the crypto market in the US, we’ve taken the difficult decision, together with our US banking partner, to suspend access to cryptocurrencies through Revolut in the US,” Revolut said in a statement provided to Silicon UK.

Meanwhile, on Friday Coinbase Global asked a federal court to throw out a SEC lawsuit accusing it of violating securities laws, saying it does not offer securities.

Regulatory ambiguity

“Our core argument is simple – we do not offer ‘investment contracts’ as that term has been construed by decades of Supreme Court and other binding precedent,” said Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Within the past month two judges have offered contrasting rulings on whether cryptocurrencies constitute securities, in cases involving Ripple Labs and Terraform.

Coinbase emphasised the Ripple Labs decision, saying the SEC’s lawsuit focuses on transactions of a kind that the judge in that case said do not constitute a sale of securities.

Crypto companies have said new laws are needed to offer regulatory clarity, as have been instituted in markets such as Hong Kong.