Xapo to Discontinue Service to US Customers in March
Xapo, one of the earliest bitcoin custodians, is ending its service to U.S. customers as of March 1.
![Xapo founder Wences Casares speaks at Consensus 2015.](https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/Gsfb6il_swdjADmzaaUoVYxzbP4=/567x378/filters:quality(80):format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/T3E7AXXCFZDCNP2UQNJASKCV7A.jpg)
Xapo, one of the earliest bitcoin custodians, is ending its service to U.S. customers as of March 1, according to a customer email dated Dec. 30 obtained by CoinDesk.
"Due to a change in our global business strategy, Xapo, Inc. is leaving the U.S. market and will be closing all U.S. customer Xapo accounts. As a result, we’ll need you to transfer your funds to an external Bitcoin address," the company writes in the email.
Xapo is in the midst of pivoting to a digital banking service, according to a May blog post. Confirming the move to CoinDesk in an email, founder Wences Casares wrote:
After attaining a banking license in Gibraltar, the company realized that it would need to set up a separate organization to comply with U.S. banking regulations, in a market without strong demand for their specific services.
"Serving the U.S. market would require quite a lot of effort, time and investment, it would require a separate organization within Xapo to support it and it would still yield a worse product than what we can offer internationally," Casares added.