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Xapo did not wait for the adoption of the Senate Bill 680 in North Carolina to cease operating in the state.

Xapo, a bitcoin wallet and other services provider, would no longer be accessible in the U. S. state of North Carolina.  The main reason, according to the company, is the new bitcoin bill that has been introduced into the Senate. 

The news came to light through a message published yesterday by a Reddit user bitcoinfinatic, living in North Carolina. He told his Xapo account was suspended and due to close in 30 days. The email he received from the company said: “Xapo has decided to discontinue services to residents of your state.”
Later, Wences Casares confirmed to Coindesk that the company has indeed decided to stop its operations in North Carolina:

“We think the effort to comply with their upcoming bitcoin bills is not justified by the number of customers we have there.” 

The bill in question has requirements absent from the New York BitLicense. A bitcoin company is obliged to have a minimum net worth of $250,000 and post a surety bond of $150,000, an amount that might change in case of a large transaction volume. 

It was first proposed by the Senator Rick Gunn, and passed the North Carolina House of Representatives in May 2015, with 117 votes for and only one against. On 14 July the bill gained approval from the Senate Commerce Committee. The senators, similar to Vladimir Putin in his recent interview, expressed their anxiety with the fact that virtual currency is not backed by any government. 

The bill will become a law only if it is approved by the majority of the Senate and then signed by North Carolina Governor Pat McRory. Nevertheless, Xapo decided not to wait. 

More and more bitcoin companies prefer to leave the territories where, from their point of view, the regulatory regime is too harsh. As CoinFox wrote in June, Coinbase decided to suspend its services in Wyoming considering that “continuing operations under the current regulatory regime would be “impractical”.” Recently, ShapeShift, a digital currency exchange, decided to stop its operations in New York in protest against the potential implementation of BitLicense 3.0. Xapo itself moved its headquarters from U.S. to Switzerland, citing the necessity to protect its customers’ privacy.