Upbit is the first exchange to have removed Litecoin from its platform. In a June 8 announcement, Upbit cited the Act on the Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information which prohibits anonymous transactions.
Mimblewimble upgrade aims to improve the security between the sender and receiver in a transaction. Mimblewimble Extension Blocks allows users to send coins to the expansion block and back to the main chain. In a word, MWED lets users make “confidential transactions” that hide the amount being sent. This makes it much harder to track assets in the network. Mimblewimble was officially activated on Litecoin on May 23.
Soon after, Upbit reached out to the Litecoin Foundation to understand the privacy-focused upgrade, and after a thorough review, this exchange decided to stop supporting LTC. Users will have 30 days to withdraw their Litecoin funds.
“We decided to terminate the transaction support for Litecoin (LTC), as it was determined that the optional function that does not expose transaction information included in this network upgrade corresponds to anonymous transmission technology under the Specific Financial Information Act.”
Besides Upbit, Bithumb – another major crypto exchange in South Korea, have also made an official announcement about removing Litecoin from the platform. According to a report from 8BTC, three other exchanges including Coinone, Korbit and Gopax have also delisted Litecoin from their platform.
South Korea is one of the countries where crypto is under very strict regulations and the Specific Financial Information Act is one of them. Accordingly, crypto exchanges must enforce anti-money laundering policies and not conduct anonymous transactions. However, at the time of writing, Litecoin barely reacted to the news, even increased by 1.47% over the past 24 hours and is trading at $62.2.
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