Bittrex announced today that it will delist privacy coins Monero (XMR), ZCash, and Dash on Friday, January 15, at 23:00 UTC.
The Bermuda-registered exchange didn’t provide a reason for the delistings, but they are privacy coins. Monero is private by default, and ZCash and Dash have an option for private transactions.
Privacy coins are under scrutiny by regulators. Darknet market White House Market, for example, only accepts Monero transactions for it has privacy features, it is easier to trace Bitcoin transactions.
Bittrex was one of the several exchanges to delist XRP after the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs for raising $1.3B in ongoing unregistered securities sales. Ripple, however, denies all the allegations.
The abrupt announcement sent the prices of the privacy coins into a downward spiral. Ever since the announcement, XMR’s price went down to 12.4%, ZEC is down 9.5% and DASH is down 8.7%. It is an average drop of 10%.
The following markets are scheduled to be removed:
BTC-XMR, ETH-XMR, USDT-XMR
BTC-ZEC, ETH-ZEC, USDT-ZEC, USD-ZEC
BTC-DASH, ETH-DASH, USDT-DASH, USD-DASH
Bittrex hasn’t specified why it delisted these coins.
Many exchanges, like ShapeShift, South Korea’s Bithumb, and LiteBit, have already delisted or refused to list privacy coins to comply with governments concerned with money laundering.
Bittrex currently carries 327 coins with 649 trading pairs on its platform.
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