Kraken Drops USDT and Stablecoins Under EU MiCA

• Kraken will delist USDT and four stablecoins in Europe by March 31, 2025, under MiCA regulations.
• Other exchanges, such as Crypto.com and Coinbase, have also removed non-compliant stablecoins.

Kraken has recently announced that it will delist five stablecoins, including USDT of Tether, and four other stablecoins from its European platform to comply with the MiCA regulations of the European Union. The delisting procedure begins on February 13, 2025, and will end on March 31, 2025.

The stablecoins affected are as follows, PayPal USD, Euro Tether, TrueUSD, and TerraClassicUSD. Starting February 13, the platform will set margin trading modes for these assets to reduce-only, allowing users to liquidate existing trades but preventing them from executing new ones. By February 27, trading will shift to sell-only, and the system will stop generating new deposit addresses. Spot trading will completely halt on March 24. The platform will convert any remaining stablecoin balances into another asset by March 31.

Crypto Exchanges Transitioning to New MiCA Rules

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) requested that exchanges wind down support for non-compliant stablecoins to avoid market distortion. Other major exchanges, including Crypto.com and Coinbase, are also winding down USDT and other such assets. Crypto.com will stop supporting ten stablecoins by January 31, 2025, while Coinbase has already delisted eight tokens. Surprisingly, the platform will delist USDT by December 2024.

The regulatory framework in Europe is too stringent, says Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s Chief Technology Officer, and will slow down the development of stablecoins and limit retail access to the cryptocurrency market. The new MiCA business framework will also impose reporting requirements for crypto transaction accounts and the correction of errors within 30 days from April 2026.

In addition, as of February 2025, all identified crypto assets during tax audits that are not reported will be considered income. Kraken and other platforms are changing their policies to comply with the standards set by the European Union, but remain accessible to their European users. Before the MiCA deadline, affected users should exchange their stablecoin balances ahead of automatic exchanges being implemented.