Deribit, a crypto derivatives exchange company, announced earlier that from February 10th, 2020 it will become a Panamian corporation. The exchange platform will no longer operate as a Dutch company (Deribit B.V.). DRB Panama Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dutch entity will assume operation.
All open client positions, holdings, equity, trade history, fees, rate limits, wallets, portfolio margin arrangements, and other system settings will be transferred from Deribit B.V. to DRB Panama Inc. Company hardware and servers will remain the same and will be moved to London per an earlier announcement. All community groups and notifications channels will also remain the same.
Futures contracts available on Deribit include bitcoin (BTC) with up to 100x leverage and ethereum (ETH) with up to 50x leverage. The exchange also offers options contracts on both BTC and ETH.
Regarding the move, the Deribit team said:
“The platform will move to Panama, as we wish to continue offering an easily accessible trading platform at very low costs. Currently, Deribit is operating in the Netherlands. However, the Netherlands will most likely adopt a very strict implementation of new EU regulations that also apply to crypto companies (5AMLD). If Deribit falls under these new regulations, this would mean that we have to demand an extensive amount of information from our current and future customers. We believe that crypto markets should be freely available to most, and the new regulations would put too high barriers for the majority of traders, both – regulatory and cost-wise. The implementation of these changes would greatly affect the exchange and its customers. Therefore, we have decided to operate the platform from Panama. The team and leadership will remain the same, with John Jansen as the CEO.”
New KYC Requirements
On February 10th, 2020, Deribit will also be expanding client KYC requirements. The exchange has chosen to implement KYC solutions from Jumio and Chainalysis. Traders will be able to apply for enhanced Level 1 services beyond the default Level 0 by the end of January.
