One of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Kraken, has dropped the top privacy coin, Monero. Reddit users shared an email from Kraken that stated their decision to no longer offer Monero’s XMR token to British customers. The crypto exchange cited regulatory compliance as the reason behind the delisting. The exchange will cease all XMR trading activities after 26 November. Along with that, deposits to XMR wallets will be disabled, and any existing XMR margin positions will also be liquidated.
Monero continues to remain a controversial coin.
The development of privacy coins such as XMR continues to remain a controversial topic. Through advanced cryptography, privacy coins like Monero hide participants’ public wallet addresses and payment amounts when their transactions appear on the blockchain, making it improbable, in the context of current technology, for forensic entities such as Chainalytics to trace the identities of the transacting parties digitally. This anonymity makes privacy coins like Monero especially attractive to cyber-criminals and others trying to cover up their financial tracks.
Several crypto exchanges have already delisted privacy coins.
Privacy coins face scrutiny from cryptocurrency exchanges across the world. Last year, Coinbase refused to list XMR, citing regulatory concerns. Earlier in January, Bittrex delisted XMR, as well as leading privacy coins Zcash and Dash. Riccardo Spagni, the former maintainer of XMR, was arrested in the United States in July at the request of the South African government on alleged fraud offenses in that country between 2009 to 2011. He has since been released from custody, but court proceedings are ongoing. Despite the growing backlash from centralized financial institutions and regulators against privacy coins, they have continued to gain traction among cryptocurrency users.
