Who loves KYC/AML raise your hands!!!
Oh… no one? Not one person? Well, I don't blame you. I am not a fan of these KYC/AML procedures that every United States based cryptocurrency exchange makes you go through. I understand that these are the current laws and I still respect that as much as I can bring myself to do so (hint: it's very little).
If you are not familiar with the term “KYC” or “AML” they stand for “Know Your Customer” and “Anti-Money Laundering” respectively. They are put in place to help stop people using services like this for money laundering, but the funny thing is major banking institutions get busted for money laundering ALL THE TIME, yet they still get to operate after paying a slap-on-the-wrist fine.
In the past, I have recommended 2 major exchanges as my go-to places to trade. Coinbase I use as my fiat on-ramp (this is how I get my USD into crypto initially), then I have always used Binance for doing trades. I don't do a ton of trading so I like to keep things simple and straight forward, but with the recent closing of the main Binance platform to US residents starting September 12th they have not launched Binance America.
With this announcement came a lot of gripes from people as they were so used to being able to use Binance without having to provide KYC info. Now with the release of Binance.us, I wanted to break down and compare some of the top US crypto exchanges KYC procedures and what info they require to trade on their platforms. I did sign up for a basic Binance.us account even though they are offering just a fraction of the trading pairs as the flagship site.
The KYC Breakdown
I put together this little chart to show you exactly what each US exchange requires in form of KYC/AML info. The info and levels of access vary greatly across these popular exchanges, but most of them will require things like your social security number, Gov. ID, address, and more for trading USD pairs.
As you can see, Binance.us has fairly comparable requirements for KYC to the other US based exchanges. I have accounts at all of these and I found that the Bittrex verification had the most requirements to get to trading USD pairs. Beaxy has some odd ones like making you do a web cam video rotating your head. Kraken asks you for the most info overall to get to their “Pro” level. Gemini leaves you hanging a bit with the whole “Additional info or documentation at our discretion”.
Overall, if you want to use a US based exchange to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and more you are going to have to do a form of KYC. If you want to give the new Binance.us a try I would love it if you used my affiliate link to help support my work.Click here to sign up for Binance.us
Hope you liked my graphic breakdown of the best crypto exchanges in the US KYC policies. Feel free to use the graphic any way you like as long as you keep my sweet mustache graphic and website links! That's all for now, until next time…
‘Stache That Crypto Friends!
You forgot to mention cryptobridge with a VPN. <3