Crypto trading platform ShapeShift delisted privacy coins to limit the company’s regulatory risk.
Zcash has been removed from the trading platform in addition to monero and Dash. It was reported last Friday that XMR and DASH had been quietly released; the delisting of ZEC was not noted.
“We delisted all those coins at the same time, for the same reason,” ShapeShift Chief Legal Officer Veronica McGregor stated. “We are de-risking the company from a regulatory standpoint, so, for now, we are not working with those coins. We may revisit the situation in the future.”
XMR, DASH and ZEC “were delisted at the same time for the same reason – to further de-risk the company from a regulatory standpoint,” McGregor mentioned in a follow-up email.
ShapeShift’s founder and CEO Erik Voorhees mentioned that the decision to remove Monero had been made months ago, although he won’t provide further comment about the reasons for the move.
ShapeShift has lagged in regulatory adoption, compared to more cautious centralized exchanges. The company chose to cut off services in New York and Washington as a part of a philosophical dispute with regulators to provide customer details. The company had softened its stand in 2018 when it accepted “know your customer” rules.
The question now is whether major US cryptocurrency exchanges see the similar regulatory landscape that ShapeShift does.
Monero has been taboo for most US exchanges apart from Kraken, with Brian Armstrong citing regulatory concerns in the USA. Both the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security have contracted blockchain tracing firms to blow XMR blockchain’s method for muddling transactions.
On the other hand, Zcash is available on Binance.US, Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken. Last September, Gemini allowed ZEC users on the exchange to use shielded withdrawals, an optional privacy feature for Zcash addresses.
In Dash’s case, the majority of American users purchase it on Binance.US, Coinbase, or Kraken.
A representative for Binance.US said that the exchange “does not comment on their coin listings.”
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