With the growing proliferation of cryptocurrencies in the financial world, there has also been a rise in regulatory measures severity and legal compliances concerning the digital coins and crypto exchanges.
On September 20, South Korea’s reputed cryptocurrency exchange UpBit announced that the exchange would delist and suspend trading leverage for an array of cryptocurrencies by the end of this month, i.e., September 30, 2019. The crypto coins ceased from the exchange include Monero (XMR), DASH, ZCash (ZEC), Haven (XHV), BitTube (TUBE), and PIVX.
According to the reports, UpBit has delisted the slew of privacy coins following the recent regulatory requirements issued by the global cryptocurrency watchdog, Financial Action Task Force or the FATF. The exchange platform announced its investigation of the 6 aforesaid coins during the start of September. The investigation was focused on figuring out if the privacy coins were duly satisfying the regulatory requirements listed by FATF in June.
Through its official blog, UpBit clarified that the primary reasons for the delisting of the currencies were to curb the illicit practice of money laundering and reduce the probable risk of inflows of privacy coins from external platforms into the UpBit crypto exchange network.
The stringent guidelines given by FATF to the countries, asking them to conduct critical scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchange platforms, has triggered governments and regulatory authorities to take control in their hands for a safe and secure economy.
Privacy coins facilitate transactions on public ledgers while keeping the identity of the investor ambiguous, which in turn fosters illegal operations. Some of the notable cryptocurrency exchanges that have recently started delisting the coins are the Coinbase UK and Korea-based exchange OKEX. Coinbase UK delisted Zcash coin from its network earlier in August 2019.
The popular Korean crypto exchange OKEX also has announced to suspend 5 privacy coins- Monero, Dash, Zcash, Horizen, and Super Bitcoin- from its network on October 10, 2019.
The sudden halt in the trading of privacy coins on popular crypto exchanges has led to a fall in their prices. The price of Zcash has seen a drop of nearly fifty percent since July 1 while Monero witnessed a 20 % downfall in the same period.