BitBay, Poland’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with approximately 800,000 clients, has issued an official statement confirming the commencement of the process of moving its operations to another jurisdiction. As Sylwester Suszek, the owner and CEO of the company, has already announced, the final choice was made for Malta, due to the “friendly cryptocurrency” internal policy.
In recent months, BitBay has been making efforts to maintain the liquidity of its operations in Poland. The decisions of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority and the difficult cooperation with Polish financial institutions resulted in changing its country of residence in order to be able to develop further:
“BitBay’s operations in Poland require cooperation with a Polish bank. Unfortunately, the last Polish institution willing to provide us with banking services decided unilaterally to terminate its cooperation with BitBay sp. z o.o. with effect from the end of May. In these circumstances, it is not possible for BitBay to continue to provide high quality services on the Polish market. Therefore, BitBay sp. z o.o. shall terminate the service agreement concluded with the Users with one month’s notice. The notice period expires on 17 September 2018,” BitBay writes on its official blog.
Apart from the termination of agreements with mid-September this year, the BitBay also points out that only until the end of this month (31 May 2018) it will provide users with all the functionalities of the trading platform in Poland. After the expiry of the deadline, it will become impossible to use PLN accounts. After 18 September, it will only be possible to withdraw the funds deposited on the account without the possibility of deposit, and BitBay’s actions in Poland will also be suspended on the same date.
“We encourage you to continue your cooperation with the BitBay brand. By logging into your bitbay.net account, you will be able to open a BitBay account in Malta. The exchange will be operated by a new supplier in Malta using the same software as the BitBay exchange in Poland to date, based on the bitbay.net domain and the BitBay trademark. The new supplier will be granted the right to use all solutions developed by BitBay sp. z o.o. As a result, the BitBay exchange in Malta will provide high quality services, as BitBay has done so far in Poland. At the same time, BitBay sp. z o.o. will continue to exist and will take up challenges other than running the crypto exchange,” BitBay added
Users wishing to continue using the services of the Sylwester Suszek’s exchange should therefore close their current accounts with a company registered in Poland and open them with a Maltese entity. The latter will provide exactly the same services, the only exception being lack of service for accounts in PLN.
“For many months, BitBay has been analysing the most crypto-friendly jurisdiction in the European Union. Constructive talks with the Government of the Republic of Malta and a favourable business environment make BitBay sure that the choice of Maltese jurisdiction is the best solution,” concludes Sylwester Suszek.
It is also worth reminding that BitBay is not the first and isolated case when the inability of decision makers in Poland loses the chance of a truly high place, on the list of countries leading in the development of blockchain technology around the world. A similar decision was made in March by another Polish exchange, BitMarket24, which moved from Kraków to London.
In such circumstances KNF made a step forward recently inviting BitBay to take part in working group in order to start constructive discussion about ideas for legal framework in regards to Blockchain, cyrptocurrencies and ICO. Commentators almost instantly pointed out that first the supervisor dragged BitBay onto their warning list in February 2018 and still hasn’t removed the exchange of it, yet now KNF clearly seeks for collaboration and advice, creating a somehow bizarre situation.
