Monero Drops 17% as Binance Delists XMR

Binance will delist privacy coin Monero (XMR) along with a handful of other assets on February 20, the company said in a blog post Tuesday morning.

The XMR price dropped 17% on the news and is currently trading for $138.00, according to CoinGecko data. With a market capitalization of $2.6 billion, it's easily the largest asset among the others being delisted.

The other coins include Aragon (ANT), Multichain (MULTI), and Vai (VAI).

Aragon is a code-free DAO creation and management platform that allows users to distribute tokens, authorize wallets for voting, and set up governance rules. Vai is the native token of the Venus Protocol, a decentralized stablecoin issuer.

Multichain, which helps users bridge assets and NFTs across multiple blockchains, made headlines last year when $126 million worth of funds suddenly disappeared. Not long after, blockchain analysis firms suggested it could have been an inside job. A week later, police in China confirmed that they had the team's CEO in custody and the remaining team said they were without access to the protocol because of the missing exec.

All that to say that there doesn't seem to be any one theme linking all the soon to be delisted tokens together. In its announcement, Binance listed several reasons why it had flagged the tokens for delisting, including trading volume and liquidity, stability and safety, public communication, and evidence of unethical or fraudulent conduct.

“When a coin or token no longer meets this standard, or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it,” Binance wrote in its blog post. “We believe this best protects all our users.”

Early in January, Binance said it was reviewing several assets, including Monero, Zcash, and Horizen.

The crypto exchange, the largest in the world by daily trading volume, cautioned that any deposits after the Feb. 20 delisting will not be credited to user accounts. But withdrawals of the tokens will be supported through May 20, the company said.