Monero Trading Going Live on Huobi Pro, But Not For Americans

Competition among cryptocurrency trading platforms is a good thing. While many centralized solutions exist, some companies try to offer something unique. In the case of Huobi Pro, they are seemingly bucking the negative trend surrounding Monero trading. Rather than disallowing the currency, Huobi Pro decided to introduce Monero trading earlier this week.

Huobi Pro Takes a Big Gamble

It is commendable to see Asian trading platforms give Monero a fair chance. This anonymity-oriented altcoin has gotten a lot of negative attention over the past few months. It has seemingly become the new go-to currency for cyber-criminals of all kinds. Especially when it comes to malware and cryptojacking, Monero has taken center stage on more than occasion.

As such, various Asian trading platforms bar all XMR trading. In Japan, the FSA has requested all exchanges to delist Monero, as well as Dash and ZCash. This is mainly due to the anonymity and crime concerns mentioned above. It is possible this trend will extend to other Asian regions in the coming weeks and months. Huobi Pro, however, is taking a completely different approach in this regard. Rather than barring XMR trading, the new platform is embracing Monero in an official capacity.

More specifically, XMR deposits were enabled on June 7th. The actual trading of Monero will go live on June 8th, with withdrawals remaining offline until June 10th. Having this currency supported on such a prominent trading platform will spark new interest in XMR moving forward. The currency can use some positive attention in this regard, after all of the negative associations in terms of crime and so forth.

Beware of the Caveats

As is usually the case when developments like this occur, certain caveats arise as well. Huobi Pro is still not available in the United States at this time. The company is exploring ways to comply with existing regulations and governmental policies. Listing the most prominent anonymity and privacy-oriented cryptocurrency will not help matters much in this regard, though.

At the same time, Gemini recently enabled ZCash trading. This confirms exchanges targeting institutional investors can offer such trading pairs. However, Gemini is a fully regulated and licensed exchange in the US, and they may have jumped through several hoops prior to completing this listing. Other platforms may not decide to pursue such options at this time. It appears Huobi Pro is certainly not inclined to do so.

It is not the first time this platform adds a privacy or anonymity currency either. Both Dash and ZCash trading have been available on the platform for quite some time now. For Monero, it remains unclear which trading markets will be opened exactly. Huobi Pro offers USDT, BTC, ETH, and HT trading pairs. It seems likely XMR will be added to all of these markets moving forward, albeit that has not been officially confirmed at this stage. At the time of writing XMR was trading at $162, 3.3% down on the day.