Bittrex announces a withdrawal of four coins for January 15th.
- Bittrex will remove ZCash, Monero, Grin and Dash on January 15th.
- These are four pieces of privacy.
- Governments increasingly saw privacy rooms as a threat in 2020.
The Bittrex Cryptonics Exchange announced an imminent delisting of four Crypto Engine coins from its listing, effective 15 January.
As privacy coins, the four tokens fall into a category that is increasingly under threat from governments around the world.
Happy New Year?
On 1 January, the Bittrex Cryptomatch Exchange tweeted that as of 15 January, Monero, Dash, ZCash and Grin would be removed from its list. These four are privacy tokens, which anonymise transactions.
We will be removing the following pieces from Bittrex Global: Monero, Dash, Zcash and Grin. Trading will be suspended on January 15, 2021 at 23:00 UTC.
Confidentiality documents, as their name suggests, are relatively difficult for interviewers to follow. Their use is increasing and some exhibits have been in the regulators‘ sights for some time.
In November, Bittrex announced the withdrawal of 23 coins for a variety of performance or regulatory issues. The exchange also identified Grin at that time as a possible target for a future delisting. Readers should note that Bittrex also mentioned MEME and VRC for a possible delisting.
Bonus Programme
In September 2020, the U.S. government offered up to $1.25 million to teams that could decipher Monero or Lightning Network encryption. The announcement carried a sense of urgency, as tight deadlines were built into the rules. Monero seems to be particularly problematic on the regulators‘ side. The call for proposals stated that a Lightning Network monitoring tool on Bitcoin already existed. However, tools for Lightning on Litecoin and Ethereum were needed.
Europe is concerned
In October, EUROPOL, the EU’s unified police body, published the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) for 2020. Among the main threats are privacy pieces. The mix of services and anonymity is changing, the report notes. Moreover, crypto crime is rapidly adapting to the changing landscape.
Encryption of communications
Governments have focused their attention on more than privacy pieces in 2020. They have also turned to encrypted communication and seen it as a threat. The European Union highlighted this in early November. The EU Council of Ministers has issued a proposal for a resolution banning end-to-end encryption of communications. This proposal concerned in particular What’s App and Signal.
Although the proposal is not binding, it shows where the EU is heading in terms of confidentiality. The authors of the proposed resolution stress the need to balance individual privacy concerns with the fight against crime.
A decentralised bypass solution?
As regulation tightens around the current generation of privacy pieces and end-to-end encryption, new privacy-oriented technologies will emerge. Both Dust, which is supported by Mark Cuban, and Status are decentralised communication applications. Blockchain and decentralisation have changed the flow of money and information; these applications intend to do the same for communications.