Privacy-Focused Cryptos Hunted Down by Forensics and Exchanges

Publicado en by Cointele | Publicado en

Speaking to Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for CypherTrace said that the company expects to see some progress by 2020 on privacy coins, stating, "We look forward to some results on privacy coins in 2020.".

As things stand, analytics firms are still not close to finding a solution for tracing transactions processed by some privacy coins like Monero, which may make it more difficult for privacy coins to remain listed on strictly regulated exchanges that support fiat pairs.

With the push of Japan, both the G-7 and the FATF and have pressured major markets to take action against privacy coins, leading large exchanges like UPbit and OKEx to delist Monero, Dash, Zcash and several other cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan and South Korea planned to support the stance of their respective governments to prohibit the trading of privacy coins prior to the meetings held by the FATF. However, the FATF released a document following its second plenary meeting entitled, "Outcomes FATF Plenary, 20-22 February 2019," explicitly stating that entities described as virtual asset service providers will have to comply to the revisioned requirements of the FATF Standards.

The revised requirements for virtual asset service providers could make it mandatory for all regulated exchanges located in G-7 countries to discard support for privacy coins, creating a more difficult environment to trade the digital assets.

Regulated exchanges in the United States like Coinbase and Gemini have not supported privacy coins since their inception, with the exception of Zcash in the case of Gemini.

For Monero and a select few other privacy coins, at least in the foreseeable future, regulated cryptocurrency exchanges that either don't support privacy coins or have already delisted privacy coins are highly unlikely to list them again.

The growing pressure from G-7 countries for exchanges to deal with privacy coins will further push the FATF to apply guidelines and standards to prevent money laundering, making it harder for exchanges to support privacy coins.

Given its selective privacy option that allows users or service providers like exchanges to choose whether to implement private transactions or not, combined with the support from a top U.S. cryptocurrency exchange in Gemini, Zcash seemingly has the best chance of being listed by exchanges operating in G-7 countries.

Like how Gemini supports Zcash, the FATF may likely require exchanges to be able to monitor and trace transactions as needed before privacy coins can be listed on major exchanges.

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