Regulation
Kraken plans to delist USDT in Europe due to MiCA rules
Kraken could abandon EU support for Tether’s USDT stablecoin, Bloomberg reported May 17.
Marcus Hughes, Kraken’s global head of regulatory strategy, said the company anticipated circumstances in which it was “not tenable to list specific tokens such as USDT.”
The EU regulatory landscape is set to change when the EU Guidelines on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) come into force in July. MiCA will require companies that issue stablecoins backed by fiat currencies, such as Tether, to register as electronic money institutions (EMIs) and meet other requirements.
Hughes said the new regulations would reduce the number and varieties of stablecoins available in Europe depending on which companies comply with the EU regime.
Other statements do not describe the delisting. In a separate report from The Block, a Kraken spokesperson said the company continually reviews its global strategy and operations for compliance, but has “no current plans to delist Tether or modify [its] USDT trading pairs.
EU regulatory concerns
Tether told Bloomberg that it expects exchanges to maintain USDT as an on- and off-ramp while providing euro liquidity to European customers.
Tether also addressed the concerns of its CTO, Paolo Ardoino, in its statement. Ardoino criticized MiCA’s “strong constraints” on reserve management and said the company was not considering obtaining EU regulatory approval “at the moment.”
Other crypto exchanges have also taken similar steps in recent months in anticipation of MiCA. OKX Tether delisted for EU users in March but did not directly cite upcoming regulations. The company said it would continue to support Circle’s competing stablecoin USDC.
Furthermore, Marina Parthuisot, legal head of Binance France, said in September 2023 that the company could delist “all stablecoins in Europe on June 30.”
Then CEO of Binance, Zhao Changpenglater said that this had been taken out of context and that the company had partnered with compliant stablecoin issuers.