Phoenix Wallet, a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet made for Lightning transactions, stated that it will cease to provide services to citizens of the United States on May 3.
Phoenix Wallet’s developer, ACINQ, intends to take the app down from American app stores on the specified date, so American users won’t be able to use it after that.
Customers in the United States are encouraged by the corporation to take their money out right away. It did advise against forcing the wallets to close, though, since that could result in increased on-chain fees.
Instead, the company encouraged American iOS users to go to the wallet’s settings page and select “drain wallet.” Android users are also advised to safely empty their wallets by going to the settings section and selecting “close channels.”
There is no official explanation for why the wallet was removed from U.S. app stores. In a tweet, ACINQ did, however, imply that there is uncertainty about whether self-custodial wallets, Lightning service providers, or even Lightning nodes could be deemed Money Services Businesses and subject to regulation in light of recent pronouncements from the U.S. government.
Following a lawsuit against the makers of the Bitcoin mixing wallet Samourai, the firm made its decision. The Southern District of New York federal prosecutors stated on April 24 that they had indicted William Lonergan Hill and Keonne Rodriguez, the founders of Samourai Wallet.
They are being accused by Rodriguez and Hill of supporting illicit activities via Samourai. According to the indictment, Hill could spend up to five years in jail, and Rodriguez could spend up to twenty years.
The makers of Samourai, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, allegedly approved over $2 billion in illegal transactions over the platform and have made over $4.5 million in fees since 2015.
Additionally, it asserts that Samourai was promoted as a tool for supporting illegal activity and censorship resistance. Along with Rodriguez’s arrest, the FBI issued a warning to users regarding “operations” on unregistered cryptocurrency firms that they considered to be money services enterprises.
U.S. officials have a history of targeting wallets and mixers connected to dubious activity, and this raid is part of that pattern. The indictments have sparked a furor in the cryptocurrency world, with Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, standing up for Rodriguez and Hill and claiming that privacy protection is a core component of Bitcoin.
Ju emphasized that the purpose behind using a tool defines its legality, drawing a comparison between the case and prosecuting the person who invented a knife rather than the person who uses it improperly.