Kraken Retracts Withdrawal Questions and Keeps the Listing

Update 07:42 UTC: Buy here, take it home, that's the product," written at 10:15 am Taiwan time on 24 October, followed by a thanks to those who flagged the emails.

Kraken Pulls Use-of-Funds Questions

Kraken has apologized to customers and withdrawn a set of questions it had emailed to people withdrawing privacy coin Monero (XMR), closing a dispute that spread across crypto media on 24 October. The messages went to clients who had bought the coin with their own money, and they asked for the customer's employer, the source of the funds and the intended use of the coins after withdrawal. Arjun Sethi, the exchange's co-CEO, said asking what money that has already left the platform is spent on was unacceptable, and the company pulled the questionnaire in full. He distinguished that practice from source-of-funds checks, which he called reasonable; those checks remain in place. Customers who received the emails were told they need not submit any information. Alongside the apology, Kraken confirmed that Monero stays listed in the regions it still serves, a point that carries weight given how far the exchange has already retreated from the coin elsewhere. The disputed questions sat inside an enhanced due diligence, or EDD, procedure, a deeper vetting layer that exchanges apply when a transaction is judged to carry elevated risk. That layer did not stop at a reason for the transaction: it demanded an account of how the withdrawn Monero would be used once it reached a customer's own wallet. Sethi's framing splits the compliance task in two. Checking where money comes from, he argued, can serve a legitimate purpose; demanding to know where it goes afterwards treats lawful customers as suspects. Screenshots of the emails first circulated through the Wu Blockchain account on X, with wider coverage following on 24 October. Exchanges have tightened customer checks for years to meet anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing obligations, and the episode shows how far such demands can overshoot before a correction comes.

Monero's place on Kraken differs sharply by region, and that split frames the retraction. The first exit came in the United Kingdom in 2021. Ireland and Belgium followed in 2024. From October 2024, customers across the European Economic Area could no longer trade or deposit, with the XMR/USD, XMR/EUR, XMR/BTC and XMR/USDT markets all shut at once and the exchange's Monero trading volume in the bloc ended. In Canada, deposits stopped in August 2025 and trading in September 2025, leaving withdrawals as the only open function. These moves track the European Union's MiCA framework and its new anti-money-laundering regulation, both of which press service providers to re-examine anonymity-enabled coins; Monero obscures transaction details by design, which is why regulators single it out, since analysts cannot follow funds across an opaque chain the way they can on transparent ledgers. The pressure is not confined to one exchange. Binance announced its own Monero delisting in February 2024, and OKX has cleared privacy coins from its boards as well. Against that record, the decision to keep Monero listed in the remaining regions is the striking part: Kraken is holding the market while trimming its questions. The coin's technical privacy stack also extends beyond transaction blinding; the project's Kovri routing work hides network-level traffic, a layer most traded assets have no equivalent of. For customers who prefer to move coins off the exchange entirely, our guide to using Monero walks through the self-custody steps.

The new reporting adds one detail the exchange's own statement did not cover: Kraken has also notified users in the United Arab Emirates of withdrawal stop schedules for seven assets, Monero among them. That measure runs on a separate timetable for UAE customers and is unrelated to the retraction of the use-of-funds questions, the source notes. The UAE action fits the regional pattern already mapped out in the article, in which the exchange's Monero footprint has been cut back in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, the European Economic Area and Canada while the listing holds in the regions it still serves. Kraken confirmed that source-of-funds checks stay in force, and customers who received the withdrawn emails are not required to submit anything further.

Sethi's account of why the emails went out adds an internal detail the retraction statement lacked. In a post on X late on 23 October, US Eastern time, he wrote that no rule required the questions and that an employee at the exchange had seen a young client with substantial funds and treated that as a red flag. "that is not a red flag. that is our customer and client," he wrote, adding that the clients were told nothing is required of them. His post also set out Kraken's amended information request policy, dated 1 October, under which unanswered inquiries can freeze deposits and trading but leave withdrawals untouched.

The retraction has now shown up in the price. On 25 October, Korean time, Monero traded up 5.02% over 24 hours at $609.88, standing 12th by market capitalization and rising on its own while Bitcoin moved sideways. The read across the market is a relief rally tied to the coin's own news: with Kraken stepping back from the withdrawal questions, the perceived risk of a sudden delisting receded. Levels to watch are close together, with $602 as the near-term support; holding it puts the $633.60 resistance back in play, while a break risks a pull to $601.44, the 38.2% Fibonacci level. Momentum indicators carry a firming tone, with the relative strength index at 63.4, the MACD histogram positive and the price above key moving averages, and CoinMarketCap's AI scored the move as a coin-specific relief rally.

Sethi's own X post carries one closing line the earlier coverage condensed away: "XMR will remain listed. Buy here, take it home, that's the product," written at 10:15 am Taiwan time on 24 October, followed by a thanks to those who flagged the emails. A fresher market reading also sits alongside the figures in the article: CoinGecko showed XMR at $602.6 at 3 pm Taiwan time on 25 October, up 2.7% over 24 hours, a milder climb than the 5.02% reading cited above. Both sources agree on the direction, a gain on the coin's own news while the listing question was settled. The retraction itself, announced by the co-CEO, keeps the exchange's withdrawal function intact for Monero customers in the regions still served.

A Listing Held Where Rules Allow

The episode draws a working boundary inside compliance itself. Source-of-funds checks rest on solid ground under anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing rules, and Kraken has kept them; use-of-funds demands on money already withdrawn drift toward surveillance of lawful spending, and the co-CEO's own concession made that explicit. For Monero, the retained listing matters commercially: a regulated venue stays open where rules still allow it, while developers draft an FCMP++ timeline covering 150 million outputs, a design that would harden privacy further, and perpetual futures open interest crossed $300M earlier this year as speculative positioning built. XMR slipped 5.1% over the past 24 hours, and Monero technical analysis frames the move for traders watching whether the retraction steadies positioning. The retraction, dated 24 October, stands as Kraken's most recent completed step on Monero; no further scheduled decision is on record.