Kraken will delist the anonymous currency Monero in Ireland and Belgium

Full support for the asset will cease on the platform on June 10

11.04.2024 - 11:45

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3 min

What’s new? Crypto exchange Kraken will delist the anonymous cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) for users in Ireland and Belgium. Support for the asset will be completely discontinued on June 10 this year. The removal of XMR will be done in two stages: On May 10, Kraken will disable trading and deposit options and automatically close all open positions, and on June 10, it will disable the ability to withdraw coins. After that, the remaining user XMR balances will be automatically converted to bitcoins.

The exchange’s statement

What else is known? In the press release, Kraken did not indicate the reasons for its decision, but based on similar actions of other crypto exchanges, we can assume that it is related to the status of XMR and other similar assets. For example, back last year, Binance delisted all anonymous cryptocurrencies in several European countries, including Belgium. Then the company specified that the reason was the need to comply with local legislation.

The EU is considering a complete ban on anonymous cryptocurrencies as part of the fight against money laundering. Anonymous crypto transactions over 1000 EUR are already banned.

EU authorities approve ban on crypto payments from wallets without KYC

The new measures must go through additional stages of approval

On February 20 of this year, the already global platform Binance delisted XMR due to non-compliance with internal standards. On March 5, the global platform OKX also removed several anonymous cryptocurrencies, including XMR, for the same reasons. In response, the Monero team said it would not compromise on privacy issues.

The Horizen blockchain team did the opposite. Due to the risk of delisting from major exchanges, the developers removed all privacy features from the blockchain after receiving approval from the community, after which the native coin ZEN ceased to be anonymous.

Finnish authorities tracked transactions in the blockchain of the anonymous cryptocurrency Monero

The work was done as part of an investigation into the hacking of the Vastaamo medical platform

In turn, the Zcash team, considering delisting from leading platforms inevitable, decided to completely remove the possibility of conducting public transactions, leaving only anonymous ones.

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