Bitfinex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges around the world, announced that it has removed the minimum equity of $10,000 that was required to start trading on a new account.
We’ve removed our equity limits so you can set yours. Join Bitfinex today, now with no minimum equity requirement. https://t.co/kQlfRcJBFV pic.twitter.com/mdfPQuUcy9
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) April 9, 2019
The company, headquartered in Hong-Kong, made the update after being overwhelmed by the surge in demand from traders who were seeking to access the platform in the past few months.
“We simply could not ignore the increasing level of requests for access to trade on Bitfinex from a wider cohort than our traditional customer base,” said Bitfinex CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde in a Medium post.
“For the last six months we have been working hard to ready our platform for a new wave of customer accounts and are now in a position to open Bitfinex to a wider audience” he added. “By dropping our minimum equity requirement, the only limits are now set by the traders themselves.”
With this upgrade, Bitfinex has basically opened its doors to anyone willing to trade cryptocurrencies, as of April 09, 2019.
Paolo Ardoino, the cryptocurrency exchange CTO, added that the main reason behind this update was to look for more involvement of the developer’s community.
One of the main reasons of this change is to get more dev community more involved. @bitfinex is quite significantly dev driven at its core and we want to let other devs building/contributing easily on/to our ecosystem. #opensource #decentralization https://t.co/y47FGoL5O8
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) April 9, 2019
Bitfinex also said that it will be upgrading “automated responses to common queries, and quicker issue resolution” from customer support. Also, users will find a new know-your-customer (KYC) portal. Additional information on the tokens listed on the exchange will also be provided for greater convenience. Last but not least, the exchange’s operations will migrate onto “self-designed, dedicated servers with premium hardware for advanced security and lowest latency.”
What used to be the top 5 ranked cryptocurrency exchange around the world has decreased its trading volume and is now positioned number 34 due to the fact that it has failed to properly audit Tether — the company that oversees USDT development. Tether has ended up saying that the tokens may not be backed by fiat money alone and this has caused panic among investors who chose this platform as their go-to exchange.