UPDATED 10:00 UTC, 24 Oct. Kraken’s main and support accounts on X, @krakenfx and @krakensupport, reposted Sethi’s post at about 04:48 UTC on 24 Oct. CryptoWatchDesk found no separate statement on Kraken’s blog or support site as of about 10:00 UTC.
At a glance
- Kraken has withdrawn emails that asked some clients who bought and withdrew Monero (XMR) for their employer, source of funds and plans for their coins, co-CEO Arjun Sethi said on X early on Saturday.
- XMR remains listed on Kraken, Sethi said, and the “what will you do with your coins” question has been dropped.
Kraken has withdrawn questionnaires it sent to Monero buyers and told them nothing is required of them, Sethi said in a post at 02:15 UTC on Saturday.
“The monero:native emails were us. They were wrong,” he wrote. Sethi said the emails went to clients who had bought XMR with their own money and withdrawn it.
What happened
Sethi said no rule required the requests.
In his account, a staff member saw a young client with a lot of money and treated it as a red flag. “That is not a red flag. That is our customer and client,” he wrote.
The emails drew attention on Friday. An account posting as KookCapitalLLC wrote on X at 19:26 UTC that Kraken was asking people who withdrew Monero what they planned to do with it, and for employer details, bank statements and proof of where the USDC used to buy it came from. Sethi replied to that post, according to his X timeline.
What changes
Questions about where money came from will continue, Sethi said.
“Where your money came from is a fair question. What you do with it after it leaves is not,” he wrote. The Defiant also reported that source-of-funds checks remain.
“XMR stays listed. Buy it here, take it home,” Sethi wrote. Withdrawing coins moves them from the exchange’s custody to the client’s own wallet, as explained in what a crypto custodian does.
Context
Monero is a privacy coin that hides senders, receivers and amounts by default. Kraken stopped offering XMR to clients in the European Economic Area on 31 Oct 2024, citing regulatory changes, its support page shows. Kraken’s parent Payward is expanding its regulated footprint in Europe, including its agreement to buy Lithuania’s Saldo Bank, as CryptoWatchDesk reported on 15 Oct.
CryptoWatchDesk found no separate statement from Kraken on its blog or support site by 04:00 UTC.
XMR was trading at $577.78 as of 03:57 UTC, according to CoinGecko, down 5.2% over 24 hours.
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This article is for information only and is not investment advice.