It definitely not a good time to be a US citizen if you want to be a player in the crypto-space. I am finding more and more instances of US Citizens being locked out of the coming new digital age.
When ICONOMI released their platform to the public on 1 August 2017 there was no warning that US citizens would be barred from participating. This was reported by 
On 11 August 2017, Bitfinex announced that they were withdrawing their KYC services to US citizens with the eventual discontinuation of services to US citizens.
Furthermore, over the next 90 days, we will be discontinuing services to our existing U.S. individual customers. We will be communicating further with affected users on timing and specifics. Our intention is to reduce disruption as much as possible for our U.S. customers.
This is not just limited to the crypto-space but to banking as well and US citizens are find it increasingly hard to just open an overseas bank account.
This all attributed to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) enacted on 8 March 2010. FATCA requires for United States persons including those living outside the U.S. to file yearly reports on their non-U.S. financial accounts to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
FATCA is just a way for the Uncle Sam to keep a tab on its citizen so it can tax them wherever they may be. The USA is only one of two countries in the world that taxes its citizen wherever they may be. The other country being Somalia.
For fear of losing access to the biggest financial market in the world, many countries go along with the requirements as set out in the FATCA. However individual companies have decided that it just does not make business sense.
As explained in the Bitfinex announcement, the resources required to service US account holders are proportionately larger than expected and just does not make business sense.
A surprisingly small percentage of our revenues come from verified U.S. individual accounts while a dramatically outsized portion of our resources goes into servicing the needs of U.S. individuals, including support, legal and regulatory.
Already as many of you will know if you have taken part in the many ICOs over the past month that US citizens are not allowed to participate in these offering with their concerns justified by the announcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that "ICOs" (Initial Coin Offerings) can sometimes be considered securities — and as such are subject to strict laws and regulations. So just to be on the safe side, some of these ICOs just issued a blanket ban on US participant.
The door is increasing being closed off to US citizens in the crypto-space and indeed in other areas too. In the long term, I see this harming the competitiveness of the US especially when no-one want to do business with its citizens.
Increasingly, ICOs are being held outside of the US in Europe and Asia. In other words, the technology is being developed outside of the US and the US may begin to lag the world in the new digital age.
The power shift from west to east is very evident and is happening right in front of our eyes in the world of technology.
I’m just letting off Steem, if you found this post informative then UPVOTE (with FULL POWER), COMMENT, FOLLOW and especially RESTEEM.
I wrote this article myself and it expresses my own opinions. Computer literacy is crucial in this day and age. Just because someone tells you it is good does not mean that it is good for you.