https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/notice-of-asset-delisting-in-ireland-and-belgium-for-monero-xmr
As of May 10, 2024 trading and deposits will be halted for XM^R.
All margin positions will need to be closed by May 10, 2024 or these positions will be auto-closed.
We will halt withdrawals of XMR on Kraken on June 10, 2024. At this time, any remaining XMR balances will be auto-converted into BTC.
I know there's a resistance to centralized exchanges but I can't see this as anything but bad for people's access to Monero.
Kraken has always been reputable and delisting from here means millions of people are losing an easy to use on-ramp for Monero.
It reminds me of sanctions in Russia. Sanctions don't totally restrict access to western goods like Levi's. They force customers to buy through a middle man who takes a cut. This increases the cost and effort to buy which results in less people buying and using whatever good.
I agree to an extent, but banning from CEXes is the only way for Monero to truly become digital cash since cash is P2P. If everything depends upon CEXes, all Monero has done is replicate the existing financial institution. We might as well adopt anonymous repaid debit cards. It would have been best if this happened after Haveno, Serai, Serai integrating with the Maya Protocol, Seraphis, and FCMP (Full Chain Membership Proofs). But realistically, Haveno was taking forever, as was Serai, and FCMP were supposed to be done after Seraphis, and Seraphis might take 5 years to complete. IMO, because of the pressure with the delisting, Haveno and Serai have accelerated their development as has the interest in using them. FCMP may arrive before the end of the Bitcoin bull run. People from the Maya Protocol have also eyed Serai as a possible hub into the privacy space (since Monero proved that it won't go away or be bow to regulation) and an integration like the Cosmos integration might be possible, making Monero integration into the whole DeFi world convenient and possible.
It's technically still easy to get XMR, since you can just convert whatever coin into XMR and there are other exchange options. Only problem that I see with the big exchanges delisting coins is making it less likely for tech-illiterate normies to use the coins.
It's likely. EU also recently voted on a 3k euro limit for cash limit for non-kyced transactions. Good thing we have Haveno coming up which is a p2p marketplace and so far the EU has left p2p mostly alone (not like a ban would be enforceable anyways).