Upbit Exchange Delists Privacy Coins Including Monero, Dash and Others

The major exchange from South Korea is in the latest Bitcoin and altcoin news for becoming the latest one to delist privacy oriented coins. The Upbit exchange decided to follow the moves of Coinbase this month and delisted a slew of privacy coins based on the recent regulatory requirements from the international body – the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

As the notice from the South Korea exchange officially showed, the transaction support for Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), Zcash (ZEC), Haven (XHV), Bittube (TUBE) and PIVX (PIVX) will be put to an end on Monday, September 30.

Upbit exchange announced its investigation of the six coins earlier this month. It seems that the exchange was determining if the privacy coins met the requirements listed by the FATF guidance issued last June.

The latest cryptocurrency news also show that privacy coins conduct transactions on public ledgers without exposing the address or identity of an individual. Aside from Upbit exchange, there were other exchanges which also started delisting the coins as well. Examples include Coinbase and Zcash from this summer in the UK – and the Korean exchange OKEX which dropped five privacy coins earlier this month.

Upbit wrote on its company blog and said that money laundering and the possibility of inflows of privacy coins were the leading reasons for delisting.

“There are also crypto-assets that can selectively utilize anonymity features among projects that are subject to end of transaction support. For these crypto-asset, Upbit has only supported transparent withdrawal/deposit support.

Nevertheless, the decision to end trading support for the crypto-asset was also made to block the possibility of money laundering and inflow from external networks. Upbit will continue to consider crypto-asset that represent anonymity functions as candidates for designation of investment warning crypto-asset.”

Now that Upbit exchange decided to delist the privacy coins, the coming altcoin news show that coin prices are starting to drop. According to Messari analytics, the Zcash price dropped over 50% since July 1 joined by Monero, which has been down near 20% over the same period.

Still, the exchange delistings and price drops have not necessarily slowed privacy coin tech development. Over the past month, the Electric Coin Company by Zcash released Halo which is the long-awaited zk-SNARK which can verify a single blockchain in one proof.