Dear customers,
As you may know, Luno has not been able to process deposits or withdrawals in Malaysia over the past few weeks due to an issue with our bank account. We’d like to provide a more detailed explanation of what is currently going on.
The Internal Revenue Board (IRB) has temporarily frozen the bank account of BitX Malaysia (our local entity in Malaysia), pending an investigation relating to tax matters. As part of this, the IRB has requested that we provide them with information on all our Malaysian customers: identification, deposits/withdrawals, and transactions.
We are working closely with the IRB to limit the parameters of this broad request. As set out in our Privacy Policy, we value your privacy and strive to protect your personal information. We will only provide personal information where we are legally required to do so and are working with our local advisers to ensure that any disclosure is consistent with our obligations to you, our customers.
We want to resume processing MYR bank deposits and withdrawals as soon as possible, but we are not able to do so until the IRB releases the bank account.
In general, we strongly encourage all customers to adhere to Malaysian tax requirements, including where necessary the declaration of any gains in the manner prescribed by the authorities.
Bitcoin and digital currencies are a new area of development for everyone including regulators, financial institutions, tax authorities, and many others. Navigating this requires everyone to work together to figure out optimal solutions to ensure the industry is safe and conducive to business. We are supportive of the recent measures by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to come up with reporting requirements for digital currency exchanges. In a similar manner, we are working closely with our banks and the IRB to come to a swift conclusion with regard to this investigation.
We are focused on making sure we achieve a positive outcome for everyone, especially our customers. This may, unfortunately, take some time, and we’d like to ask for your patience and support while we work through the situation. Unfortunately, we can’t give a time estimate for this to be resolved, but we’ll notify you as soon as we have another update.
In the meanwhile, you can still buy, sell, send and receive digital currencies like ETH and BTC with your MYR local currency balance. All your funds —local and digital currencies— remain safe with Luno and all other services remain unaffected.
Thank you for your understanding.
Posted Jan 12, 2018 - 13:35 UTC