Kraken, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, recently announced that it will no longer support the Monero (XMR) privacy token for its customers in Ireland and Belgium. In a notice, Kraken stated that trading and deposits for XMR will be halted starting from May 10. The exchange also emphasized that all margin trading positions must be closed before the deadline, or they will be automatically closed by Kraken. Furthermore, Kraken revealed that it will fully delist Monero from its platform on June 10, meaning that withdrawals for the XMR token will no longer be possible for users in Ireland and Belgium after that date. In the event that users still have XMR tokens remaining in their accounts after the deadline, Kraken will automatically convert their balances into Bitcoin (BTC).
This decision by Kraken comes in response to recent developments in the European Union, where crypto asset service providers are now prohibited from offering accounts to anonymous users or supporting privacy-focused tokens like Monero. Despite this news, the price of the Monero token appears to be unaffected, currently hovering around $132.35. According to CoinGecko, the token reached a 24-hour high of $136.59 and a weekly high of $139.15.
It is worth noting that Kraken is not the first exchange to delist Monero. Binance made a similar announcement in February, causing the price of the token to drop. However, it quickly recovered from a five-month low of $136 and is now trading steadily.
The crackdown on privacy-focused tokens began in 2018, with Japan being the first country to initiate a ban on anonymity-enhanced tokens. Since then, regulators in various countries such as South Korea and Australia have also taken similar measures to ban or delist privacy coins from exchanges. In addition to Kraken and Binance, other exchanges like Huobi and OKX have also delisted Monero and other privacy-focused digital assets to comply with global regulations.
Overall, the delisting of Monero by Kraken is part of a broader trend in the cryptocurrency market, where exchanges are facing increasing regulatory pressure to restrict the trading of privacy-focused tokens.