Huobi, a cryptocurrency exchange, revealed on September 6 that it had already discontinued trading for Dash (DSH), Decred (DCR), Firo (FIRO), Monero (XMR), Verge (XVG), Zcash (ZEC), and Horizen (ZEN).
Deposits for each coin will also be discontinued on September 12, but withdrawals will continue to be accepted.
On September 19, all of these tokens will be delisted entirely from Huobi
According to Huobi, the decision is made to comply with “the most recent financial regulations,” as well as its global token management rules.
“Huobi Global strictly complies with the compliance policies of every country and region and always strives to protect our users’ assets,” the company stated.
Huobi has asked users to cancel any open orders for each coin. If they do not, those orders will be automatically canceled when the item is delisted, and the relevant assets will be credited to the users’ accounts.
The announcement represents yet another barrier put up by regulators between consumers and cryptocurrency-based privacy tools. Coins like Monero lack fully transparent public ledgers, making third-party tracking difficult or impossible.
While cypherpunks value such coins for their enhanced privacy, regulators are wary of their potential to facilitate financial crime.
As a result, exchanges are afraid to touch the assets, which can stifle their adoption among the general public. Despite being a top 30 crypto by market cap, firms such as Bittrex, Binance.US, and Coinbase do not offer trading for Monero.
Crypto privacy is under attack.
The regulatory crackdown on crypto privacy is only intensifying. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) recently sanctioned Tornado Cash, an Ethereum-based mixing service, and promptly imprisoned one of its developers.
On the other hand, trading for major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum has managed to avoid such attacks due to their less-than-ideal privacy for criminals. Blockchain intelligence firms such as Chainalysis have used their public ledgers to track and recover millions of dollars in stolen funds.
