Kraken plans to delist its privacy coin Monero from its platform for customers in Ireland and Belgium on June 10th.
In a notice posted earlier today, the cryptocurrency exchange announced that all XMR trading and deposits will be suspended starting May 10th, and all margin positions must be closed by this date to avoid a forced closure. I made one thing clear.
Kraken said that XMR withdrawals will be stopped on June 10, at which point any remaining XMR balances will be automatically converted to Bitcoin.
Kraken’s decision follows Binance’s delisting of Monero from its main platform in February after installing “surveillance tags” on several privacy coins in January. Binance had previously moved to delist Privacy Coin in Belgium in September 2023.
Rival cryptocurrency exchange OKX also delisted Monero in January, along with privacy-focused coins Zcash and Dash.
EU’s new anti-money laundering regulations
The announcement comes amid the new EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), which is expected to pass full formal final approval in the European Parliament and Council of the EU this month. Applications are then scheduled to begin around summer 2027, three years after publication.
Although AMLR prohibits CASPs (crypto asset service providers) from offering privacy coin accounts, such practices are already widespread. The EU's Markets in Cryptoassets Act (MiCA), which will come into force in June 2023 and become fully applicable from December 30, 2024, already prohibits cryptoassets with built-in anonymization.
According to The Block's prices page, Monero has been flat over the past 24 hours, down about 1% to $132.60.
XMR/USD. Image: Block/TradingView.
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