Now other cryptocurrencies that are likely to be volatile in the coming months are privacy coins.
That’s because it looks like major exchanges are slowly starting to delist them due to regulatory pressure with Hobie being the latest exchange to comply.
The people in power aren’t fans of privacy go figure.
Now you might be thinking that this is nothing new given that privacy coins have been delisted by cryptocurrency exchanges in the past for the same reason.
The difference is that all those exchanges were in heavily regulated jurisdictions such as Japan and South Korea.
Huobi’s delisting of Dash, decred pharaoh, monero, verge, zcash and horizon is significant because Huobi was what is commonly referred to as an offshore.
Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi is based in Seychelles which is not nearly as strict as other places to put it lightly.
As such Hobie’s privacy coin de-listing could be a sign of more to come from other offshore exchanges.
The next in line to comply could be Kucoin given that it’s also based in Seychelles.
Note that this is just my speculation but it’s something to be aware of if you’re a fan of financial privacy.
Now luckily for Monero and most other privacy coins Huobi only accounted for a portion of their trading volume though a kucoin delisting would deal a bigger blow it’s one that most of these coins could probably survive.
However a Binance delisting is something that most privacy coins would probably not survive.
While Binance was able to justify listing these coins in the days when it didn’t have a global headquarters it’s going to be increasingly harder to justify going forward.
That’s because Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has been actively trying to secure numerous exchange licenses and office locations around the world.
There is a strong chance that these global regulators could point to privacy coins as an area of concern.
If this were the case then Binance would be in a bit of a pickle about what to do.
Now I’ll repeat that this is just my speculation but I find it hard to see how the cookie could crumble any other way with central bank digital currencies being rolled out across the world.
Governments want to make sure that their citizens do not have access to any alternatives.
BTC isn’t that big of a threat because every transaction can be easily tracked due to Bitcoin’s transparent blockchain.
This means that regulatory pressure can be easily applied when someone breaks ranks even if the transactions themselves can’t be stopped.
By contrast privacy coins particularly Monero’s XMR are next to impossible to trace.
Yes, this makes them prone to adoption by criminals for all sorts of illicit activity but it also makes privacy coins the only way to protect your financial freedom specifically your ability to purchase things without scrutiny.
Now as I’ve mentioned before financial privacy may not be all that important today but it could be very important tomorrow.
It will be of paramount importance once CDBC’s are rolled out that’s for sure.
It could quite literally be the difference between life and death in some contexts