- Binance has watered down its decision to delist a number of privacy coins
- The exchange had planned to delist 12 coins across three countries
- The list has now been dropped to five, but Monero is still among them
Binance has watered down its decision to delist a number of privacy coins, saying it has revised its policy following community feedback which has allowed some coins to remain. Binance announced at the end of May that it was going to delist a clutch of privacy coins, including Monero and Zcash, for its customers in France, Italy, Poland and Spain at the end of June, citing “local laws and regulations”. However, it seems that the troubled exchange giant has found a way around this issue and has revised the list, although XMR is still among the coins that have been banned.
12 Coins Initially Fell Foul
Binance’s announcement at the end of May caught many by surprise, mainly because of the number of coins that were up for removal. In total, 12 coins were selected to be removed, including stalwarts such as Dash, Verge, Monero, with Binance blaming laws in the affected countries:
While we aim to support as many quality projects as possible, we are required to follow local laws and regulations regarding the trading of privacy coins, to ensure we can continue to serve as many users as we can.
However, it appears that Binance has now found a way around these laws and regulations by reclassifying some coins:
After carefully considering feedback from our community and several projects, we have revised how we classify privacy coins on our platform to comply with EU-wide regulatory requirements.
This revision means that seven of the 12 coins will now no longer be delisted, although BEAM, XMR, MOB, FIRO, and ZEN will still be removed.
Privacy Coin Crackdown Continues
Privacy coins have been the subject of regulatory action in various jurisdictions in recent years: Okex ditched privacy coins in 2019 to comply with regulations; Shapeshift delisted Monero and Dash the following year; and Bittrex canned Monero, ZCash, and Dash in 2021. With regulations only getting tighter we will almost certainly see this trend continue.
