The US crypto exchange ShapeShift recently removed up to three crypto currencies at once.
All three coins – XMR, DASH and ZEC – are privacy coins.
The ZEC was removed due to regulatory concerns, despite the company’s large investment in one of its founders.
ShapeShift, a US crypto-money exchange based in Colorado, recently decided to remove the Zcash (ZEC) data protection coin from the list. The ZEC is actually the third coin recently removed from the exchange, with the other two coins being Monero (XMR) and Dash (DASH) – all private coins.
All three coins were removed quite quietly without much attention being paid to the move.
Private coins lose their place in the crypto world
According to Veronica McGregor, head of the Exchange’s legal department, the coins were removed due to regulatory concerns. McGregor confirmed that ShapeShift no longer works with these crypto currencies, which is not really surprising for the majority of the crypto industry.
Privacy coins allow users to conduct private transactions that are extremely difficult (and sometimes impossible) to trace. As such, privacy coins have always been a thorn in the side of the authorities, as they can be used for anything from money laundering, terrorist financing, black market exploitation, extortion, and many other purposes.
For this reason, they displease governments around the world, and they enable regulated exchanges to remove such coins from the list in order to continue to operate in accordance with regulations and avoid a bad reputation and links to illegal activities.
ShapeShift strives for regulatory compliance
Veronica McGregor also added that all three coins were removed from the list at the same time and for the same reason. However, the most notable cancellation is that of the ZEC, since the Stock Exchange already invested in one of the founders of the ZEC in 2016. The coin was listed very soon after this investment.
Now, however, the Stock Exchange is in the process of obtaining official authorisation and is turning away from the rebellious character it had in previous years. It began in 2018, when it asked users to go through the KYC procedure and verify their identity. Now it is continuing this path by obtaining the approval of the authorities.
With a variety of coins like Bitcoin that are transparent in their transactions – there seems to be less and less room for privacy coins that provide true privacy, and regulators continue to push for their complete removal from trading platforms.
