Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, the San Francisco-based cryptocurrencies exchange, said on April 18th that they would not answer the questionnaire that was sent to them the previous day by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. This happens just one day after Schneiderman announced the start of his research called the Initiative For The Integrity Of The Virtual Markets, so he sent a questionnaire to 13 cryptocurrency exchange platforms operators based in the United States, one of which being Kraken.
Kraken found an escape route from answering to the New York Attorney General’s questionnaire
In this regard, Powell indicated via email that Kraken would not answer this questionnaire, claiming this exchange house moved its headquarters from New York to San Francisco during 2015 due to the strong regulatory framework (BitLicense) that applied in that jurisdiction.
The departure of Kraken driven by BitLicense of New York in 2015 pays today another dividend (…) I realized that we made the wise decision to leave New York three years ago and that we can dodge this bullet.
Jesse Powell, the CEO of Kraken
Kraken would then be the first of the 13 cryptocurrencies exchange platforms that received the questionnaire that decided not to collaborate with the New York Attorney General.
The rest of the exchange houses that received the document are GDAX, Gemini, BitFlyer USA, Bitfinex, Bitstamp USA, Bittrex, Poloniex, Binance, Tidex.com, Gate.io, itBit, and Huobi.
The CEOs of 5 cryptocurrencies exchange platforms have already positively responded to the New York Attorney General’s request
The representatives of Gemini, Bittrex, Poloniex, BitFlyer, and Bitfinex have already expressed themselves positively and have declared that these exchange offices will answer the questionnaire of the Attorney General.
According to Schneiderman, this research is carried out with the purpose of protecting clients and increasing the transparency of the before-mentioned exchange offices. For this reason, this questionnaire was sent asking about topics such as exchange policies, procedures, suspensions, privacy, and prevention of money laundering.
The authorities of New York have not been exactly friendly with the companies that operate cryptocurrencies exchange platforms and a month ago they presented a special tariff of electric services that aims at those companies that perform cryptocurrency mining. Moreover, as a consequence of BitLicense, many of these platforms decided to move out of the New York’s jurisdiction, as is the case of Kraken.
