As new rumors begin swirling about possible insider hanky panky at Bitpay, another giant in the industry is wreaking havoc on the Bitcoin community.
Circle Internet Financial, a Boston company specializing in global money transfers, has stopped mentioning Bitcoin in its advertising, put an end to instant ACH bitcoin purchases, and severely restricted the amount of BTC users send and withdraw. Basically, it appears that Circle simply used the bitcoin community to jump-start another Venmo type venture and is now ready to move to phase two of their master plan.
The following video was published yesterday and now headlines the company’s website. It contains no mention whatsoever of Bitcoin:
In addition to removing Bitcoin from its advertising, the company is also strongly encouraging all users to convert their balances to USD, and now forces a pop-up during login with the option to stick with Bitcoin all but greyed out. And to add insult to injury, the company has disabled instant ACH purchases of bitcoin, and placed tight restrictions on the amount of bitcoin that can be sent during any given week.
Some community members are hot under the collar after discovering it will take them weeks, and in some instances months, to move their stored bitcoins out of their Circle accounts.
Circle interestingly decided to make this move at a time when they had a cover story related to their new $5,000 Bitlicense which is peanuts compared to the New York money transmitter license which they needed anyway to conduct their non-bitcoin related money sending activities.
Of course, many Bitcoin industry publications fell for the shell game hook, line and sinker and wrote glowing articles about the Bitlicense achievement whilst ignoring the fact that Circle has just thrust a butcher’s knife squarely into the back of Satoshi and his digital-coin dreams.
Full Story: http://altcoinpress.com/2015/09/circle-spanks-bitcoin-with-account-restrictions-bitcoin-free-ads-and-sending-limits/
