Cryptocurrencies

BitBay delists Monero amid money laundering concerns

Cryptocurrency exchange BitBay has announced that it will no longer support the trading of Monero (XMR) from February 19 2020.

Monero deposits will be shut off on November 29, while holders have been asked to withdraw all their tokens from the exchange by May 20 of next year.

The exchange has cited money laundering and anonymity fears as reasons for its decision to delist Monero, which has a market cap of $895 million.

“Monero (XMR) can selectively utilise anonymity features among projects. The decision was made to block the possibility of money laundering and inflow from external networks,” the statement read.

“Monero (and other cryptocurrencies with this specification) has already been delisted on other fiat-crypto exchanges for the same reason. As a licenced exchange, BitBay has to follow the market standards.

“Compliance with market standards and regulations allows us to provide our clients with legal security and convenience of using the exchange, with the participation of a friendly banking system and the availability of payment operators.”

BitBay is not the first exchange to delist Monero over compliance concerns. OKEx Korea made a similar decision to delist privacy coins in November, while Coinbase UK decided to drop Zcash in August.

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Oliver Knight

Londoner ‘Ollie’ graduated from Birmingham City University with a journalism degree in 2016. He combines his writing with his love of crypto and blockchain here at Coin Rivet, saying “It disrupts well-established institutions (banks) while giving an avenue to the less fortunate to achieve financial freedom.” Like all true Londoners, his pet hate is… “People standing on the left-hand side of the escalators on the Tube!”.