Across the world, Bitcoin (BTC) enthusiasts turn to XMR.to to make their transactions private. The service provider, which offers privacy through the use of Monero (XMR) as the intermediary currency, has temporarily stopped servicing the US-based clients.
The decision was disclosed in a Reddit thread by a main member of XMR.to team on March 30. There statement, however, carried very little information:
“XMR.to will for the time being not be serving customers in the US. We are working with our legal team to understand the best way forward. This policy will come into force tomorrow [March 31 2019]. Thank you for your understanding.”
XMR.to enables clientele of the platform to remit Bitcoin to a particular address, but to offer maximum privacy a comparable value is first moved in the form of privacy focused crypto Monero to XMR.to, which after collecting Monero, processes the payment of Bitcoin on behalf of client.
Implementing the latest legal limitations is not that easy for XMR.to as it primarily focuses on protecting privacy not only from public but from the service itself. The XMR.to website highlights that:
“No-one (including us) can link you to the [XMR] payment you send us. The only other link to us is your IP address (from which you are visiting this webpage right now), which you should hide if you wish to protect your privacy to the full extent (see best practices below).”
XMR.to does record IP addresses, however, it also offers a .onion address and points out that users can increase privacy by using TOR (dark web) to completely cover their IP address, location and identity. Monero’s anonymity features have ignited arguments among executives in market watch dog due to worries over Anti-Money Laundering conformity and Counter-Terrorist Financing.
Due to the above discussed concerns, top level crypto sector participants who prefer to play according to broad market rules, for example Japan based Coincheck, have decided to delist XMR and other privacy focused altcoins from trading. In recent times, the Finance Committee of France’s National Assembly has proposed a blanket ban on privacy focused cryptos, including Monero.
More importantly, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has professed that in spite of oppositions, the organization still has methods to track altcoins including Monero.
