US cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex announced the delisting of three popular privacy-focused altcoins – Monero, Zcash, and Dash.
According to a post on Bittrex’s official Twitter, the cessation of quotation will take effect on January 15th.
The cryptocurrency community responded immediately.
“The delisting of private coins by regulated exchanges was an inevitable continuation of government efforts to establish totalitarian financial supervision,” Andreas M. Antonopoulos, a cryptocurrency promoter and author of several books on Bitcoin and blockchain technology, wrote in response to the news.
Bittrex did not explain its decision in any way, but the reason for the delisting is clear as day: the move is part of a larger conspiracy of exchanges that are removing privacy-focused coins from the trading list in order to easily introduce and implement KYC and AML procedures.
However, according to Jesse Powell, CEO of another American cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, there is currently no pressure from the US government regarding cryptocurrency regulation of anonymous coins. Powell commented on the news as follows:
“I haven’t heard anything about regulation. Apparently, this is some specificity of their business. ”
In fact, after a closer look at Bittrex’s trading volume, it becomes obvious that the deleted coins are not very popular with the exchange’s customers. If the shutdown of privacy-focused coins was indeed due to reasons unique to Bittrex, and other exchanges did not follow suit, then much of the panic caused by this announcement is in vain.
However, as the well-known DeFi trader Degen Spartan points out, delisting private coins from simple and straightforward platforms such as popular centralized exchanges can have a significant impact on the value of these tokens.
If XMR, ZEC, and DASH are not available on highly liquid markets, their price will be compromised.
