As of September 4, 2023, Stellar ($XLM) has seen an 8% increase in its price, indicating a potential mini breakout. This comes at a time when the asset has been consistently “shorted by the crowd,” according to data from Santiment. The uptick in price could be further fueled by liquidations.
Market Watchlist: TON, XMR, ARB
Based on data from Santiment, investors should closely monitor the cryptocurrencies TON, XMR, and ARB, as these assets are also being “shorted by the crowd.”
As of the latest data, XMR’s market value stands at approximately $21.3 million, a significant increase from $11.7 million on August 21. The long/short ratio for XMR is 1.44, indicating a balanced market sentiment. This suggests that XMR is less likely to experience liquidity issues in the long positions.
ARB’s Declining Open Interest
In contrast, ARB has seen a decline in open interest. It reached a high of around $60 million on August 28 but has since dropped to $48.7 million. Despite the decrease, the open interest remains substantial. However, ARB’s long/short ratio of 3.78 serves as a warning signal for long traders, indicating potential liquidity risks.
In terms of seasonality, May is considered a relatively successful month for BTC. Given the current risk aversion among investors and the macroeconomic environment, this May may prove to be different.
Those accustomed to Bitcoin’s extreme volatility are scratching their heads and looking forward to a rally similar to that of last year when the flagship cryptocurrency doubled in price from July to November’s all-time high. What happened to Bitcoin’s legendary volatility? The following are a few possible explanations.
BTC Is Still Correlated, But to a Lesser Degree
As concerns grow over how aggressively the Federal Reserve should tighten policy to combat decades-high inflation, richly valued tech stocks have been experiencing historic volatility. Bitcoin, however, hasn’t been battered to the same extent.
The chart below measures systematic risk by looking at how Bitcoin’s returns correlate with the market. As of right now, its value is 0.0362, which indicates that it is moving in sync with the benchmark, but not as drastically.
Source: Macroaxis.com
Bitcoin Volatility Vanishes
I wrote in December that institutional investors might dampen the volatility of the crypto market and smooth out the market’s dynamics some time in the future, and it seems we are already witnessing that.
The Average True Range Index, a volatility indicator, shows that Bitcoin volatility has been falling and is currently at its lowest level since December 2020.
Source: Macroaxis.com
Top Performing Privacy Coins
Over the past three months, the privacy coin sector with a combined value of $8.84 billion has posted an overall gain of 20.24% compared to weak or negative performance by other sectors during the same period.
Haven Protocol (XHV)
Haven Protocol posted the biggest gain over the last three months, rising 135.23%. With a market cap of $75,268,861, it traded at $3.04 at the time of writing.
Built on Monero and including xUSD, the world’s first private stablecoin, Haven aims to become an open, private, and decentralized offshore bank, with a mint-and-burn mechanism that allows users to convert between XHV, Haven’s native token, and its ecosystem of synthetic assets and algorithmic stablecoins.
Source: CoinGecko
Monero (XMR)
Monero (XMR) is the most popular privacy-centric cryptocurrency based on the CryptoNote protocol, a secure and untraceable system. All of Monero’s transactions remain 100% unlinkable and untraceable thanks to a special kind of cryptography.
XMR was worth $221.24 when this article was written, with a market capitalization of $4,006,536,770. For the past three months, it gained 49.81% and outperformed Bitcoin by 40.49%.
Monero is nearing its tail emission on June 8, which is expected to appeal to the mining community and keep the price of XMR high.
Source: CoinGecko
Railgun (RAIL)
Railgun provides privacy for trading on DEXs and lending due to its fully Eth layer-1 architecture, which does not use layer 2 nodes or cross-chain bridges to compromise security. It is a smart contract system that gives zk-SNARK privacy to any Ethereum transaction or smart contract interaction.
Railgun allows users to go untraceable when trading, using leverage platforms, or adding liquidity with any Ethereum dApp.
Currently trading at $3.22 with a market cap of $184,773,805, RAIL is 23.5% away from its record high of $4.20 set in January 2022, so it’s likely it will soon retest the new high.
Source: CoinGecko
Zcash (ZEC)
Another privacy-preserving cryptocurrency, Zcash provides anonymous value transfer using zero-knowledge cryptography. The protocol provides the option of shielding transactions to ensure they are completely anonymous, or to make them transparent to show them on the Zcash blockchain.
It has recently been revealed that Edward Snowden played a key role in the creation of Zcash privacy coin.
Source: CoinGecko
In the past three months, ZEC gained 31.10% against the greenback and 23.04% against Bitcoin. With a market cap of $1,640,053,535, its price is currently $132.16, up 10% over the past 24 hours.
For now, Chainalysis estimates $602 million in ransomware payments from 2021—less than for 2020.
But it expects the final number to rise substantially.
Chainalysis—a blockchain data firm—has found that value stolen through crypto ransomware attacks likely rose from 2020 to 2021—it just hasn’t accounted for it all yet.
According to apreviewof the company’s 2022 Crypto Crime Report, it’s identified $602 million in ransomware payouts for 2021, compared to $692 million for 2020. However, it believes the 2021 figure to be an “underestimate” given that it has revised its initial 2020 estimate upward by nearly 50%.
“Anecdotal evidence, plus the fact that ransomware revenue in the first half of 2021 exceeded that of the first half of 2020, suggests to us that 2021 will eventually be revealed to have been an even bigger year for ransomware,” the report states.
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that blocks access to computer files until the attacker’s requests are fulfilled. Hackers often ask for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in funds—typically paid in cryptocurrency so it doesn’t have to go through traditional payment routes. There are various versions or types of ransomware, called “strains.”
According to Chainalysis, the Russian-based group Conti was easily the biggest ransomware strain last year in terms of revenue. Using a ransomware-as-a-service model (RaaS), Conti operators extorted over $180 million from their victims.
DarkSide was also listed. It’s the strain that perpetrated the infamous attack on the U.S. Colonial Pipeline, leading to fuel shortages in some areas. The company was forced toshell out$5 million in Bitcoin to their hackers at the time. Throughout the year, DarkSide seized at least $75 million in similar hacks.
Since cryptocurrency payments are peer-to-peer, hackers are continuing to abuse them as a method of escaping interruptions from third-party intermediaries. In traditional finance, banks and payment providers can not only reverse criminal transactions, but also easily identify those users and ban them from their platforms.
Yet that doesn’t make Bitcoin a criminal paradise either. In fact, thanks to Bitcoin’s public blockchain, the U.S. Justice Department was able to track and seize almost half of the money DarkSide stole from the pipeline. That’s why some ransomware attackers choose to use privacy-based coins such asMoneroto facilitate these transactions instead.
The number of active strains in 2021 rose to 140, up from 119 in 2020, and just 79 in 2019. The activity of most of these strains “comes and goes in waves,” Chainalysis identified Conti as the only strain that stayed active throughout the year.
Along with the number of strains, average ransomware payment size also increased in 2021, up to $118,000 from just $88,000 in 2020.
Privacy coin Monero (XMR) usually spends its time in the shadows, which is exactly the way its community likes it. Till date, it is still impossible to penetrate the privacy that the digital asset offers, making it the go-to choice for investors who are trying to keep their crypto transactions and holdings a secret. Recently though, the cryptocurrency is breaking out onto the radars of more investors as it shatters an important milestone.
As more crypto users are discovering their transactions are not as hidden as they might have thought, they are moving towards coins like Monero that offers the privacy they desire. This has seen the number of users rise on the blockchain and total transactions carried out has soared, more than doubling in just the first quarter of 2022.
Monero (XMR) Surpasses 20 Million Transactions
Monero is no doubt the leading privacy coin in the crypto space and it has once again proven this with its recent milestone. The coin seems to have exploded in popularity in just the first two months of 2022 as the number of transactions carried out has doubled from 2021. Last year, the number of transactions recorded was sitting at 8.65 million. With less than two months into the new year, the volume of transactions tells a new story.
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Growing almost 150% in just a matter of months, the number of Monero transactions has crossed 20 million. Data from Blockchair shows that there have been a total of 2,554,175 blocks mined over the lifetime of the privacy digital asset, landing on more than 20,023,000 transactions carried out in the same time period.
This number is important for a digital asset like Monero whose sole utility is being untraceable. It spells more usage from crypto users as they move towards keeping their crypto footprints hidden. It also points towards more adoption of the coin, and as the market rises out of the ashes of the last burn, it may mean significant growth for the digital asset in relation to price.
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Growing With The Market
Like most cryptocurrencies, the price of Monero (XMR) had suffered when the market had crashed. This saw the cryptocurrency crashing from its high of almost $525 to the low $140, around which its value has trended for the past week. However, with the recent market recovery going into last weekend, Monero has followed along and has posted a recovery, up 16% in the past 24 hours alone.
Related Reading | Cryptocurrency Wallet Phantom Marks $1.2 Billion Valuation Amid Recent Funding Round
This does not mean that the digital asset is out of the woods though. Sentiments around the cryptocurrency continues to skew greatly in the bearish territory, and sell signals continue to overpower the asset. According to data from Barchat, Monero’s sell indicators have taken hold with 88% pointing towards sell. The 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day MACD Oscillator also point towards sell.
XMR recovers to $176 | Source: XMRUSD on TradingView.com
On the short term though, the 20-day moving average has turned towards buy. Coupled with the increased adoption and growing volume recorded, this trend is expected to continue and drive the price of the digital asset up in its wake. With a strong close above $180 by end of day, next significant support will be at $200, at which point, bulls will be able to sink their claws firmly into the asset.
Featured image from CoinJournal, chart from TradingView.com
Leading crypto intelligence firm Santiment is revealing some bullish on-chain metrics that are developing for Litecoin (LTC) behind the scenes.
LTC is trading at $148 at time of writing, down 64% from its all-time high of $410 in a hard downtrend. Despite this, Santiment says crypto whales may have other plans for the early Bitcoin (BTC) competitor.
According to the firm, “smart money” Litecoin whales are on a 15-week accumulation streak, something that hasn’t been seen since 2017.
“Litecoin is showing some signs of life, up about +5% against BTC in the past two days. Whale addresses holding 10,000 to 1,000,000 LTC are in a 15-week accumulation pattern that is their longest since 2017. They have added 5% of LTC’s supply in just 15 weeks.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
Santiment also says that privacy-focused blockchain Monero (XMR) is showing some under-the-radar signals that could be bullish. According to the firm, Monero is being discussed in forums at its highest rate in 10 months.
“Monero has decoupled from the crypto pack on a down Thursday. The asset has been quiet since hitting $513 back on May 7, 2021. But with XMR being one of the few pumping coins currently, it’s seeing the highest forum discussion rate in 10 months.”
Looking at BTC and the broader market, Santiment says that traders may be getting too confident in predicting further price drops.
Historically, the firm says that current conditions often lead to short squeezes, which is when an excessive number of traders attempt to short the market only to get hit with an unexpected price bump that leads to a cascade of liquidations that push the price up even further.
“Bitcoin and several other altcoins reveal a higher short-to-long ratio than usual, indicating traders are expecting prices to drop. Traditionally, when this funding rate ratio is extremely negative, shorts are primed to be liquidated and prices rise.”
Source: Santiment/Twitter
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The year 2021 has undoubtedly been a bull market with Bitcoin (BTC) raising the all-time high price bar several times this year. But not all crypto assets have performed equally. There have been a number of losers in addition to the majority of winners in terms of price gains.
Since the beginning of 2021, total crypto market capitalization has gained 190% from just under $800 million to over $2.3 trillion today. It hit an all-time high of just over $3 trillion in early November.
Top 3 crypto gainers in 2021
The crypto top-ten in terms of market capitalization looked a little different on Jan. 1, 2021, as it contained Litecoin (LTC), Chainlink (LINK), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). These have dropped out and have given way to Solana (SOL), USDC, and Avalanche (AVAX) by the year’s end.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Dogecoin has skyrocketed this year, driven primarily by Elon Musk’s surreptitious social media posts. On New Year’s Day, DOGE was priced at just $0.004 and largely ignored by the majority of crypto traders. DOGE had its first little spurt in February following the first of what would be a number of subsequent Elon pumps.
DOGE prices really went on a wild ride in April and May when they surged more than 1,100% to an all-time high of $0.731 on May 8, pushing it up the crypto market cap charts to the fourth spot.
Musk extolled the virtues of DOGE as a payments network in June, resulting in another round of FOMO for the memecoin.
DOGE has been falling from that epic pump since May, both against Bitcoin and USD. But all of the additional mainstream media it has got, in addition to major trading platform listings, has still given the Shiba Inu-inspired joke coin a monumental gain of 3,800% so far this year. In BTC terms, DOGE has gained 2,100% on the year from 168 satoshis to 3,696 sats in mid-December.
DOGE/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position by market capitalization on Dec. 15: 26 — Final position: 11
Solana (SOL)
The native token for the enterprise blockchain Solana has also had a bumper year in terms of gains. At the beginning of 2021, SOL was priced at just $1.52, at the time of writing it was trading for a little over $150. This is an epic gain of more than 9,800% in less than a year.
SOL hit an all-time high of $260 in early November but has retreated as markets began correcting late in the year. The massive move has given SOL a fifth spot in the market cap charts after peaking at fourth. Against BTC, SOL has gained 6,473% over the year.
Major investments and increased adoption in the wake of surging transaction prices on Ethereum have driven momentum for Solana, which has also been touted as an “Ethereum killer.” In June, Solana Labs raised $314 million via a private token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital.
SOL/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position: 112 — Final position: 5
Terra (LUNA)
The native token for decentralized financial payment network Terra has also made it into the crypto top ten briefly. LUNA began the year trading at around $0.65 and was largely unknown to mainstream retail traders.
Prices were lifted in March and May, but they didn’t really take off until August when a massive pump took LUNA to an all-time high of $77.73 on Dec. 5. At the time of writing, LUNA was trading up a whopping 8,515% since the beginning of the year. In satoshi terms, LUNA has increased up 5,815% this year against BTC.
The rapid expansion of partners on the Terra ecosystem has been largely responsible for the bullish price action.
LUNA/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position (CMC): 62 — Final position (CMC): 10
A few others are also worth a mention for making impressive gains this year and they include Avalanche’s AVAX up 2,330% on the year, Polygon’s MATIC, which has surged more than 12,000%, and Binance Coin (BNB) making 1,271% this year.
Top 3 crypto losers in 2021
Internet Computer (ICP)
Amid a world of hype, Dfinity’s Internet Computer project exploded onto the scene this year after 5 years of largely secretive development. It promised an internet revolution replacing the trillion-dollar legacy internet and IT industry by allowing developers to install their code directly on a “public internet” without having to rely on third-party hosting firms.
Speculators in a frenzy for the next big thing in crypto loaded up on ICP tokens when they were listed on major exchanges in mid-May sending prices skyrocketing to a very quick all-time high of $700 on May 10.
Since then, ICP prices have virtually collapsed sinking to an all-time low of $24.29 on Dec. 4, a painful 96% down from its peak just 7 months prior. It has also lost 93% against Bitcoin in terms of satoshis.
ICP/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting/Highest position: 8 — Final position: 37
EOS (EOS)
The once darling of crypto that many touted would kill Ethereum has actually done very little in terms of price movements this year while those around it have surged.
EOS had already fallen out of the market cap top ten on Jan. 1 and it continued to fall down the charts all year. EOS prices have only gained a paltry 15% over the year when others were in thre and 4 figures so we would consider that a loser in the grand scheme of things.
Block.one’s once-hyped token was trading at $3.25 at the time of writing, having slumped to the 50th spot by market cap. It is currently 86% down from its April 2018 all-time high of $22.71 and has lost 22% against BTC over the year.
In early November, members of the EOS ecosystem voiced their dissatisfaction with the direction the network was heading.
EOS/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position: 15 — Final position: 50
Monero (XMR)
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero has also fallen heavily down the market cap charts this year as a number of major exchanges delisted digital assets that offer anonymity.
XMR prices have mustered just 17% this year and have come nowhere near their January 2018 all-time high of $524. Currently trading at around $183, XMR has slumped 66% from that peak resulting in a fall to 49th in the coin cap tables. Monero has lost 30% against Bitcoin since the beginning of the year.
XMR/USD YTD – coingecko.com
Starting position: 16 — Final position: 49
To put these gains and losses into perspective, Bitcoin is up 67.5% year-to-date (YTD) year while Ethereum gained 440%.
Pirates attempting to download illegal copies of the latest Spider-Man film are exposing their computers to crypto-mining malware.
According to researchers at cybersecurity firm Reason Labs, copies of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” circulating on torrent sites have been packaged with malware that diverts the user’s computer to mining the “privacy coin” Monero.
The affected file is named “spiderman_net_putidomoi.torrent.exe,” which translates from Russian to “spiderman_no_wayhome.torrent.exe,” hinting at the source of the torrent: “most likely from a Russian torrenting website,” according to Reason Labs.
The malware crypto miner adds exclusions to the Windows Defender antivirus software and creates a “watchdog process” for persistence. After killing any process that shares the name of its components, the malware then launches two new processes, Sihost64.exe and WR64.exe. Once up and running, the malware runs XMrig, an open-source Monero miner.
Although the malware doesn’t steal personal information, Reason Labs pointed out that it does exact a cost on the victim, in the form of increased electricity bills and high CPU usage—causing their machine to slow down. The cybersecurity firm recommended “taking extra caution when downloading content of any kind from non-official sources – whether it’s a document in an email from an unknown sender, a cracked program from a fishy download portal, or a file from a torrent download.”
Basically, don’t pirate movies from dodgy torrent sites.
Cryptojacking malware
Cryptojacking, or inserting malicious software onto an unsuspecting user’s computer to mine cryptocurrency, is a growing phenomenon; in the first half of 2021, they were the most common family of malware detected by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which detected nearly 75,000 instances of cryptojacking malware.
Earlier this month, cybersecurity firm Sophos reported that Monero-mining malware was infecting company networks. “All of the miners we’ve seen recently are Monero miners,” Sophos threat researcher Sean Gallagher told Decrypt.
Monero has become a favorite of cybercriminals because it incorporates privacy features that make it challenging to trace.
Law enforcement agencies are keen to crack the privacy coin too. Last year, the IRS awarded contracts worth $1.25 million to firms attempting to develop tools to track Monero, while in August this year, crypto intelligence firm Ciphertrace claimed to have developed a toolset for tracing Monero transactions at the behest of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Bitcoin has played a central role in financing the white supremacy movement, according to a new Hatewatch analysispublishedby the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Hatewatch identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists for this essay and then probed their transaction histories through blockchain analysis software,” the SPLC said. “What we found was striking.”
According to the SPLC, Greg Johnson, editor in chief of white supremacist publishing house Counter-Currents, Andrew Anglin of neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer, Don Black of racist platform Stormfront—and many others—were all early investors in Bitcoin and have since reaped the financial rewards ever since.
“The estimated tens of millions of dollars’ worth of value extreme far-right figures generated represents a sum that would almost certainly be unavailable to them without cryptocurrency, and it gave them a chance to live comfortable lives while promoting hate and authoritarianism,” the SLPC added.
Molyneux spent over $3 million in bitcoin
The SPLC used crypto exchange Gemini’s 2021State of the US Crypto Reportto show that less than 25% of Americans own cryptocurrencies.
However, those numbers increase dramatically among far-right extremists. “Hatewatch struggled to find any prominent player in the global far-right who hasn’t yet embraced cryptocurrency to at least some degree,” the SPLC said.
White supremacists are not just investing in Bitcoin—or receiving donations in Bitcoin for that matter—but they’re spending it too.
Stefan Molyneux, a proponent of scientific racism and eugenics, has both received and spent the most Bitcoin among his white supremacist counterparts. Molyneux has received over $1,500,000 worth of Bitcoin, and spent over $3,000,000.
“Molyneux’s experience with Bitcoin stands out alongside the other extremists Hatewatch studied,” the SPLC added. “Not only did he invest long-term in Bitcoin, holding the asset through periods of volatility rather than cashing out, but his donors bestowed him with 1,250 Bitcoin tokens, far more than anyone else Hatewatch studied.”
Monero also finds traction
This Hatewatch analysis is the latest in a long line of examples showing how important crypto has become to the far right.
In September,an investigationby theAssociated Pressshowed that far-right groups and individuals had raised millions worth of cryptocurrencies. Anglin was a standout, having received $5 million worth of Bitcoin since January 2017.
Anglin reportedly turned to Bitcoin after having been previously banned by PayPal and other credit institutions. He even published a guide called “Retard’s Guide to Using Bitcoin” after the Charlottesville riots in August 2017.
In September, Douglass Mackey—a far-right conspiracist who threatened voters—received $60,000 worth of Bitcointo fund his legal troubles.
Most recently, popular QAnon figure and Congress-hopeful, Ron Watkins, took to Telegram to ask forBitcoin donationsto aid his campaign after failing to raise funds in the traditional way.
However, Bitcoin is not the only culprit here.
Once law enforcement started circling, Anglin turned to Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
“Every Bitcoin transfer is visible publicly. Generally, your name is not attached to the address in a direct way, but spies from the various ‘woke’ anti-freedom organizations have unlimited resources to try to link these transactions to real names,” Anglin said at the time.
Right-wing pundits like Candace Owens and Ryan Fournier have also beenpushing “right-wing” cryptocurrenciesdubbed “Let’s Go Brandon” and “F*ck Joe Biden.”
As far back as the Capitol Hill riots this January, rioters including white supremacist Nick Fuentesreceived $500,000 worth of Bitcoinby a now-deceased donor who said he “cared about what happens after [his] death,” and who “decided to leave [his] modest wealth to certain causes and people.”
A new report from cybersecurity firm Sophos details a new variant of the Tor2Mine malware.
The malware installs a Monero crypto-miner that is more aggressive than previous variants.
We know, we know: Your blockchain is unassailable. But you still need to update your antivirus software. Otherwise, this Monero miner could eat into your network.
In a new report released today by cybersecurity firm Sophos, which boasts over 500,000 businesses as customers, says a new variant of the Tor2Mine crypto-miner is infecting company networks to mine Monero (XMR), a popular privacy coin known for being hard to trace.
“All of the miners we’ve seen recently are Monero miners,” Sophos threat researcher Sean Gallagher, who authored the report, told Decrypt in a phone interview.
According to Gallagher, the malware looks for holes in a network’s security, generally in the form of systems that have not had their security features—including antivirus and anti-malware software—updated or patched. Once installed on a server or computer, the malware will look for other systems to install its crypto-miner for maximum profit.
NEW ⚒️
Two flavors of Tor2Mine miner dig deep into networks with PowerShell, VBScript
Using remote scripts and code, one variant can even execute filelessly until it gains administrative credentials…
1/15 pic.twitter.com/OfXWYHwcTC
— SophosLabs (@SophosLabs) December 2, 2021
Hacks remain a real concern for DAOs and DeFi projects, which are vulnerable to more than just smart contract exploits. Yesterday, Decrypt reported BadgerDAO was hacked for $120 million in a front-end exploit, according to the cybersecurity firm PeckShield.
“Once it has established a foothold on a network, it is difficult to root out without the assistance of endpoint protection software and other anti-malware measures,” Gallagher said in a press release. “Because it spreads laterally away from the initial point of compromise, it can’t be eliminated just by patching and cleaning one system. The miner will continually attempt to re-infect other systems on the network, even after the command-and-control server for the miner has been blocked or goes offline.”
In other words, Tor2Mine quickly spreads to every other system on a network, installing the crypto-miner where it can—and it’s not easy to remove.
Because they generate less revenue than other attacks, like ransomware, mining malware applications need to infect as many systems as possible to make the attack worth the trouble.
Gallagher tells Decrypt, a sign that a system is infected is unusually heavy use of processing power, reduced performance, and higher-than-usual electricity bills. Kind of like you’re mining crypto.
Monero, which means “coin” in Esperanto, has become a favorite of cybercriminals due to its many privacy features that make tracing much harder than Bitcoin and Ethereum. Monero wallet addresses and transactions are difficult to trace because of the use of ring signatures and stealth addresses, which hide the identities of both the sender and the receiver.
Sophos recommends patching vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems like web applications, VPN services, and email servers and installing anti-malware products to make them much less likely to fall victim.
While Sophos makes its own products, Gallagher just urged some type of protection. “Any anti-virus is better than no anti-virus,” he said.
It seems UK users will soon be unable to access Monero on one of the leading crypto exchanges. There have always been concerns around the Bitcoin competitor regarding the absolute privacy that the digital asset confers. Until now, it remains impossible to track/trace Monero transactions, making it the ultimate privacy coin, and governments are worried that individuals will use this to evade taxes.
Another concern is around the use of the cryptocurrency as a criminal tool, although there is no definitive way to tell if this is true. However, it remains high enough on the list of concerns that even countries where cryptocurrencies are not illegal are clamping down on the cryptocurrency. The latest is the UK as regulations have pushed Kraken to remove access for its citizens.
Delisting Monero Over Regulations
In an email sent out to users that were posted on Reddit, Kraken outlines the reason for the delisting. The email explained that the crypto exchange was trying to be in compliance with UK regulations and as such, it will no longer be supporting Kraken (Payward Ltd) on its platform. The delisting will happen in a week and will affect trading activities around the privacy coin.
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Kraken announced in the email that as of November 26th, UK users will no longer be able to trade Monero (XMR) on the platform. All trading activities will cease including Instant Buy/Sell Services, order book trading on the XMR/BTC, XMR/USD, and XMR/EUR pairs.
In addition to halted trading services, UK users will also not be allowed to fund their balances with Monero on the exchange after November 26th. However, users will be able to withdraw all of their current Monero balance to other wallets or exchanges.
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XMR trading at $234 | Source: XMRUSD on TradingView.com
Margin trading is also affected and will slowly go into effect. On November 23rd, UK users will no longer be able to increase their Monero margin positions on the exchange but they can reduce it. Three days after, on November 26th, the exchange will force liquid all open margin positions and cancel all open orders.
In closing, the Kraken team said; “We appreciate your understanding and we apologise for any inconvenience caused. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our support team.”
Why The Crackdown?
Monero is one of the few cryptocurrencies that manage to confer absolute privacy to their investors. This has made it the coin of choice for investors who want to be in control of their own money. As this Reddit user eloquently puts it, it’s “One of the few coins that truly makes your money your own. Security without compromising privacy, something that was unheard of only a few years ago.”
Related Reading | New Record For Bitcoin Lightning Network As Adoption Grows
Monero is a cryptocurrency that has maintained the privacy component behind the creation of cryptocurrencies. It puts the investor in complete control and makes it impossible for a third party to interfere or see where the funds are going, and since governments cannot track it, then they cannot tax it. Hence the crackdown on privacy coins to limit their use by residents.
Featured image from Kraken Blog, chart from TradingView.com
