Due to EU anti-money laundering regulations, Kraken will delist its privacy cryptocurrency Monero in Belgium and Ireland by June 10th.
Kraken has announced that it will suspend Monero (XMR) deposits and trading on May 10th. Withdrawals will be accepted until June 10th, but customers are advised to close all margin and leverage positions before XMR trading is suspended.
XMR barely reacted to the news, with the token’s price changing only 0.6% over the past 24 hours, trading flat at around $133, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Starting June 10th, Kraken will disable withdrawals and convert all Monero balances to Bitcoin (BTC). The moves in Belgium and Ireland come after the cryptocurrency exchange removed Privacy Coin from its global exchanges in February.
In January, the company assigned surveillance tags to several coins, including XMR. Other crypto exchanges such as Binance and OKX have also delisted Monero.
Kraken's Monero support discontinued due to EU regulations
Kraken's decision to suspend XMR support in Belgium and Ireland comes against the backdrop of anti-money laundering (AML) policies introduced by the European Union last month. The crypto community initially speculated that the EU had moved to ban self-custodial wallets and crypto transactions.
However, Patrick Hansen, Circle's EU Strategy and Policy Director, said: explained New AML regulations prohibit crypto asset service providers from offering privacy coins and users from using tokens like XMR to make payments to merchants.
Similarly, the EU's Market in Cryptoassets (MiCA) law also considers privacy coins to be contraband. MiCA was passed into law last June and is expected to come into force by December, while the EU's new AML regulations are likely to be implemented by mid-2027.
