Crypto Exchange Huobi to Delist 7 Privacy Coins, Citing ‘Latest Financial Regulations’

Crypto exchange Huobi revealed that it had already terminated trading for Dash (DSH), Decred (DCR), Firo (FIRO), Monero (XMR), Verge (XVG), Zcash (ZEC) and Horizen (ZEN) on September 6. 

Deposits for each coin will also cease as of September 12, but withdrawals will continue to function.

A complete delisting of all of these tokens is slated for September 19.

As Huobi explained, the decision is an effort to comply “with the latest financial regulations,” as well as its own global token management rules. The exchange has yet to respond to Decrypt‘s request for comment.

“Huobi Global strictly complies with the compliance policies of every country and region and always endeavors to safeguard our users’ assets,” said the firm. 

Huobi asked users to cancel any open orders they have for each coin. If they don’t, those orders will be auto-canceled at the time of delisting, and relevant assets will be credited to users’ accounts. 

The announcement marks another roadblock created by regulators between consumers and cryptocurrency-based privacy tools. Coins like Monero do not have fully transparent public ledgers, making transactions difficult or impossible to track by third parties. 

While valued among cypherpunks, this enhanced privacy has also made regulators especially leery of such coins for their potential to facilitate financial crime. 

By extension, it’s also made exchanges afraid to touch the assets, which can stifle their adoption among the general public. For example, firms like Bittrex, Binance.US, and Coinbase do not offer trading for Monero despite it being a top 30 crypto by market cap. 

Crypto privacy under threat

The regulatory crackdown against privacy in crypto is only heating up. 

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) recently slapped Tornado Cash—an Ethereum-based mixing service—with sanctions and jailed one of its developers shortly afterward. 

By contrast, trading for major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have managed to evade such attacks due to their less-than-ideal privacy for criminals. 

Blockchain intelligence firms like Chainalysis have been able to use their transparent public ledgers to track and retrieve millions of dollars in stolen funds.