Cryptocurrency and bitcoin exchange The Rock Trading Ltd. to end the year announced some measures taken to simplify and streamline its operations. First off, the European exchange, which has had its offices in Malta since its founding in 2011 announced its moving all of their operations, including legal, finance, IT, offices, etc. to Italy.

Being a “SEPA focused” crypto exchange, The Rock decided to cut off USD support completely. The company cited that it always had headaches with USD: while generally strongly requested by the market, it could not accept US Citizens or Residents and could not accept USD by wire transfers. This circumstance has always led to a poor USD business on the exchange in terms of liquidity and volume.

By the end of this month, BTCUSD and USDXRP markets will be removed. Withdrawals of remaining customer USD balances will be available for a period after USD removal.

Further Changes

Margin Trading – Margin trading will be removed as well. Given the current regulatory environment in Italy, until it’s clear that the company is allowed to have margin trading, the management favors to remove it.

Davide Barbieri, CTO at The Rock Trading said:

“Personally, I am a little bit relieved by this decision, not because of its regulatory issues, but because I have seen too many customers use margin trading without enough awareness of this powerful (and dangerous) tool. Less profit for us, but I hope more time for users to understand.”

“Our ties with Italian bank partners and financial institutions are in a good shape thanks to this move, and one thing that we can already announce is that they will give us access to bank APIs which will speed a lot the process of crediting of EUR fiat deposits.”

The Rock is a smaller exchange which allows for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, Peercoin, Zcash, and XRP.