Kraken is delisting Monero for UK customers by November 2021
Currently, the world’s eighth-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, Kraken, has announced it is one the process of delisting privacy coin Monero (XMR) in accordance with compliance regulations in the United Kingdom. The platform would henceforth cease all XMR trading activities and set XMR wallets to withdraw-only feature alongside force-liquidating any existing XMR margin positions after November 26.
Using advanced cryptography, privacy coins such as Monero obscure participants’ public wallet addresses and payment amounts as soon as their transactions reflect on the blockchain hence making it improbable, in the context of current technology, for forensic entities like Chainalytics for digitally tracing the identities of the transacting parties.
The enhanced development of privacy coins like XMR has been a controversial hot topic for a long. Supporters now claim that they are providing users with greater personal privacy than cryptocurrencies with universally-viewable ledgers such as Bitcoin, where knowing that individuals’ public wallet addresses and transactions become difficult to be cross-compared with know-your-customer information stored on exchanges for piercing the shroud of their identity.
Critics, however, say that the untraceable nature of privacy coins make their adoption ideal by criminals, for use in criminal activities like tax evasion, drug trafficking and money laundering operations. As a result, privacy coins face a lot of scrutiny from cryptocurrency exchanges across the world. Last year, Coinbase had also refused to list XMR, citing regulatory concerns. Earlier in January 2021, Bittrex delisted XMR, Zcash (ZEC) and Dash.
The former maintainer of XMR, Riccardo Spagni, had been arrested in the United States in July 2021 as the South African government for alleged fraud offences in the country between 2009 and 2011. Although he has been released from custody, court proceedings are ongoing.
Despite the growing backlash faced from centralized financial institutions and administrative bodies against privacy coins, they are continuing to gain traction among crypto users.
The total market cap of all privacy coins currently stands at about $15 billion.
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