Bittrex, a leading crypto exchange, has decided to withdraw three leading privacy coins of the crypto space. It will delist Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and Dash (DASH). Bittrex states that the trading will terminate at 18:00 Eastern Time on Jan. 15. After the market delisting, Bittrex will offer its users up to 30 days to remove the delisted tokens. Nevertheless, shortening of the withdrawal period can take place under certain instances elucidates Bittrex. Consequently, the exchange warned its consumers to withdraw the coins as soon as possible.
Today’s decision occurs just a few after the trading venue decided to delist XRP, Ripple’s native cryptocurrency. Bittrex announced the news of the delisting via the company’s blog this week. However, it did not offer any particular reason behind the delisting. Monero, Zcash, and Dash are called privacy-preserving crypto coins. Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, privacy coins cover transaction amounts and address for anonymity. Monero’s transactions, for instance, are automatically private while, other privacy coins such as ZCash and Dash grant their users a chance to choose to remain private or not.
Bittrex delists the privacy tokens under Regulatory pressure?
This news has created a lot of speculation in the crypto community. Some speculate that the delisting is owing to the regulatory pressures. In particular, FATF declared new anti-money laundering measures last month, which may have influenced Bittrex to delist the three coins. The company will stop trading for these markets: BTC/XMR, USDT/XMR, ETH/XMR, ETH/ZEC, BTC/ZEC, USDT/ZEC, USD/ZEC, BTC/DASH, USDT/DASH, ETH/DASH, and USD/DASH. However, the news of delisting affected the price of the tokens massively. In a matter of minutes, Monero cascaded from $169 to $155, ZCash sank from $67 to $60, and Dash from $102 to $95.
However, earlier, other exchanges have delisted privacy coins as well. OKEx Korea and Upbit ceased trading the privacy tokens in 2019 for similar purposes. Bitbay also delisted Monero soon after. Bittrex’s actions are rare. However, it is one of the first significant U.S.-based exchanges to delist all three coins. However, we await to see if other exchanges will follow the Bittrex delisting suit or create a huge impact on the crypto market.
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