In what only I can think of is a stunning turn of events Socios.com has decided to shelve its Socios.US platform as part of what they have called an "operational review". Since I have been extremely busy at work (working for Congress honestly can really really suck sometimes) it turns out I had missed their first couple of emails to me to notify me that on November 30th my account would be closed. When I went back through my emails I saw that while I was a couple of weeks late they had only emailed me about this October 30th.
Naturally with this being the crypto space and knowing that scams are rampant, I dove in and looked to try and further see what was going on and was pretty amazed by what I saw or did not see. The Socios.US X account and blogs have not been updated or touched since June/July which is a long long time in the crypto space. During this time though the original accounts continued to announce new updates, Fan Tokens, giveaways, etc. again not a great sign for those in the US like myself. Sadly upon reaching out directly to the Socios.US team, I found out that this was a real thing and that the US branch was "making changes after an operational review".
This was not only disappointing but also surprising. Earlier this year Socios launched their US app and invested $50 million into their New York base. Not only that though they were signing up partnerships with numerous NFL, NBA, and NHL teams so the market was healthy and these teams with their billionaires trusted this product offering and their teams/money with them. Last year they bought roughly a 25% stake in FC Barcelona's media production arm Barca Studios. Then this year they continued to build out their product with the launch of their native blockchain Chiliz separating themselves from both ETH and BSC.
Luckily for US users, there is still time for people to make a couple of choices. Users could sell off all the Fan Tokens that they have and then link their debit card to their Socios.com app to withdraw the money they made or they could withdraw their Fan Tokens to a self-custody wallet (like Meta Mask). I had both some USD and various Fan Tokens that I withdrew. I guess since Socios is closing this and we do not have any other option they are covering all the fees associated with this as I did not have to pay a cent in either USD withdrawal or Fan Token transaction fees.
It is safe to say that this is a huge disappointment and something that is a little concerning because there have been no public comments on this. Socios has also not been issued any sort of notice or legal action in the US so it only adds further confusion to the whole issue. While regulation certainty is far from secured there has been considerable evidence that if you are not breaking existing laws (like Binance who admitted to allowing sanctioned nations and individuals to trade with USD) you would be fine. Without knowing what exactly went awry only suspicion and doubt can be cast upon what otherwise was a fantastic product that was leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the field when it came to this specific industry.
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