The core of this series of no American allowed events is the fact that SEC and CFTC think any futures exchange operating outside US shall not be allowed to accommodate US residents. In their eyes, this market can only be reserved for regulated, taxable US companies such as CBOE. I figure IRS will also have access to all the KYC info as well as all the trading records.
So it is not about who says what in their TOS because under US law they all should ban US traders. They just put things there to please US regulators who are fond of long-arm jurisdiction. However, in reality, they may unspokenly welcome US traders. What really matters here is how much risk they are willing to take, and withstand pressure from US regulators.
I can say from my own experience that BaseFEX doesnt ban US traders atm regardless of what they say in their TOS, and I learned from friends that KuMEX neither does but liquidity isn't good there. And correction on my previous comment: Deribit now bans US IPs.
No doubt, I've been trading from the US on a number of platforms where I'm technically banned. Bitmex and all these derivatives exchanges know they are tempting the CFTC to crawl up their ass if they aren't careful. In fact,
the CFTC is already investigating Bitmex for allowing Americans.
Even those who are tacitly allowing US traders right now should be expected to clamp down more in the future in this environment. I just don't want to get my funds frozen. My biggest worry is that non-KYC exchanges will eventually begin banning VPN usage. That'll be the end of all these shenanigans for us Americans.
Kumex has definitely been disappointing. Hopefully they (and Kucoin) see an influx of volume when Binance formally bans US traders next month, but I'm not sure whether that'll really happen.