Kraken has announced plans to delist five stablecoins, including Tether’s USDT, in response to the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
The move is aimed at ensuring compliance with the new regulatory framework as the EU tightens oversight on digital assets.
The delisting process will take place in stages, starting on February 13, when margin pairs involving the affected assets will be placed in “reduce-only” mode for clients in the European Economic Area (EEA). This will allow traders to only reduce or close out existing margin positions. By February 27, these tokens will enter “sell-only” mode, preventing EEA clients from generating new deposit addresses while still permitting trading. Spot trading for the delisted stablecoins will cease entirely on March 24, with all open orders and exchanges into other assets being closed.
Kraken confirmed that any remaining holdings in the affected stablecoins by March 31, 2025, will be converted to an equivalent MiCA-compliant stablecoin. After this deadline, any deposits made to existing addresses will only be available for withdrawal.
The delisting will impact Kraken users in 30 EEA countries, including Austria, Cyprus, Czechia, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Alongside USDT, other stablecoins to be removed include PayPal USD (PYUSD), Tether EURt (EURT), TrueUSD (TUSD), and TerraClassicUSD (UST).
Kraken’s decision follows a similar move by Crypto.com, which has also announced the removal of USDT and nine other stablecoins in the European market. Crypto.com users will have until the end of the first quarter of 2025 to convert the affected tokens to MiCA-compliant alternatives. If not converted by the deadline, the assets will be automatically exchanged for a compliant stablecoin or another asset of corresponding market value.
Notably, Kraken recently delisted Monero (XMR) for users in the EEA as part of its efforts to comply with evolving regulatory obligations. The exchange announced that XMR trading and deposits, including XMR/USD and XMR/EUR pairs, ended on October 31, 2024 for EEA-registered clients, with any open orders automatically closed at that time.
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