Bitcoin company Xapo shuts down its North Carolina service

Bitcoin service provider Xapo has confirmed that the company will no longer provide services to North Carolina.

Xapo moved its headquarters to Zurich, Switzerland in May due to regulatory concerns. Earlier yesterday, a user in North Carolina posted a post on Reddit saying that users had received a notice about Xapo's 30-day service shutdown.

Xapo CEO Vince Casares told CoinDesk:

“We do plan to stop serving North Carolina because we do not have a money transmitter license in the state and we feel it would be disrespectful to our users to compromise with the state’s upcoming bitcoin bill.”

We have previously reported that North Carolina is working to regulate digital currency operations and wants to incorporate them into the state's currency exchange laws.

Recently, Xapo CEO Casares was embroiled in a lawsuit. His former employer LifeLock sued Casares for infringing its intellectual property rights. CoinDesk also asked Casares about this matter, but Casares refused.

Growing regulatory concerns

Xapo is not the only Bitcoin company to shut down services to parts of the U.S. in light of the increasingly stringent digital currency regulations in the U.S. In June, San Francisco-based Coinbase also announced that it would stop providing services to Wyoming due to digital currency regulations enacted by the Wyoming Bank Branch.

ShapeShift also announced in June this year that it would shut down its services in New York State because it disagreed with BitLicense, the digital currency regulatory framework introduced by New York.

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