Privacy Coins and EU Anti-Money-Laundering Law: An Assessment of the Ban From July 2027

Anyone holding Monero, Zcash or Dash at a European trading platform has been running into headlines about an imminent EU ban on privacy coins for months. This piece is an assessment and not a news report. What is documented is the wording of an EU regulation together with its date of application, and one recorded case from 2024 in which a large trading platform forcibly converted Monero holdings. Everything that follows from this for individual coins and providers is assessment. The two are kept apart here. The documented core fits into two sentences. Article 79 of the European Union's anti-money-laundering regulation prohibits certain companies from keeping accounts that obscure the holder or the transactions, and it names anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies explicitly in doing so. The regulation becomes applicable on 10 July 2027. No reason to hurry follows from that, but there is reason to check where your holdings sit and what would happen to them if the platform holding them reshapes its range. Article 79 of the EU anti-money-laundering regulation: what the wording says The relevant provision is Article 79(1) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, adopted on 31 May 2024. It sits in Ch...