MERCATO LIBERO

User Joshua Ferdinand just posted this to Bitfinex's Bnk2TheFuture equity offer forum page. It is a reply he supposedly received from Bitfinex about the current situation.
Some things worth noting:

• They admit that the deposit freeze was imposed by the banks, not their choice (duh!)
• Manual process for non-USD withdrawals (with plans to automate it in future)

'Thanks for your message and for your continued support.
Bitfinex is solvent and in a better position now than we have been at any time over the last 12 months. We have redeemed or converted all the BFX tokens and so no longer carry any debt.
We are experiencing record volumes on our platform, highest ever new customer onboarding in March 2017 and will shortly be adding additional trading currency pairs (CHF / HKD / EUR / JPY / CAD / AUD) which will only serve to increase our position as the number one platform for FIAT trading volume.
We will be going through an audit later this year once we have identified an audit partner. This is not as straight forward as it may seem as very few audit firms are willing to take on a cryptocurrency business due to lack of knowledge on their part but we recognise that this is a requirement not only for our new equity holders but also the community in general and so this will be pushed through as soon as possible.
All cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals are functioning as normal.
There are issues with USD withdrawals and deposits. Our banks in Taiwan have been blocked by US intermediary banks from processing withdrawals on our behalf. All USD withdrawals, regardless of which Country they are going to have to go through a US correspondent bank. This block has been extended recently to include USD deposits.
Obviously this is an unfortunate situation which we are trying to find solutions for as quickly as possible. Initially we are processing FIAT withdrawals in Swiss Francs (CHF) and Hong Kong dollars (HKD), and so if your bank account is able to receive these currencies then we can make a withdrawal to your bank account. This is a manual process at the moment and so you would need to check with your bank first, upload a new bank statement if needed and then request your withdrawal in USD and send us a note through support stating in which currency you want this paid. We will then arrange for the transfer within 7 business days for standard withdrawals. We will need to perform a platform upgrade to make this process automated in the future so that you will be able to select the currency and see the spread for that currency. We will be adding additional withdrawal currencies within the next 1-2 weeks including EUR / JPY / CAD / AUD
At the same time we are negotiating with alternative banking partners with regards to re-establishing a channel for USD withdrawals and we will make an announcement once a solution is available. With regards to USD deposits, these have recently been stopped and so any deposits that are received at our bank after the 18th April will be returned to you. As per the above, once we have established an alternative channel; an announcement will be made.
The last 4 years have been an ongoing battle with US based banks, some of which ban any cryptocurrency company without thought or research into that company. The Bitfinex KYC / AML program is second to none in the industry and in many areas surpasses that of the banks themselves. We will continue fighting this battle and are confident of finding a solution within a short timeframe.
We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause but rest assured we are working on this problem with all of our resources. We will make further announcements as and when more information is available on our site, Twitter, blog and social media.
Please see the below for further instructions regarding FIAT withdrawals: If you have an existing open USD withdrawal request then this can be cancelled and the funds credited to your account for trading or conversion to Crypto and then withdrawing via cryptos. If you are unable to cancel this yourself then please let us know and we will check and cancel for you. If you want to receive the withdrawal in an alternative FIAT currency then you would first need to check with your bank to make sure that they can accept that currency. If they can and it can be to the same bank account that we have on file for you then you can submit a USD withdrawal request as normal and send us a ticket / message that you want to have this withdrawal paid in CHF or HKD. (other currencies as and when they become available) If your existing bank account cannot accept payments in these currencies and you want to add a new bank account then you can send a recent (within the last 3 months) bank statement to us via support – or upload this directly to the verification section of your account in the “Manage documents” section -- https://www.bitfinex.com/verification/docs , this would also apply if we need to send funds to the same bank but under a different account number. You then need to send us a message / ticket to let us know that this has been done and submit the USD withdrawal request If your bank can only accept USD then your only options are to wait or make a withdrawal via cryptocurrencies, unfortunately we have no timeline at the moment for when we will be able to make the USD withdrawals again
At this stage, we are still negotiating on currency exchange rates and spreads, once we know the spreads we will try and make this information available to all users, possibly by posting the rate in the withdrawal section, under bank wires for verified users. '