Kraken Co-CEO Says Monero KYC Emails ‘Were Wrong,’ Confirms XMR Stays Listed

Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the exchange’s Monero emails were “wrong” and confirmed that XMR stays listed, after Kraken asked customers who bought Monero with their own money and withdrew it to disclose their employer, source of funds, and what they planned to do with the coins. Sethi said no rule required the inquiries, and that the questions have now been withdrawn. The statement, posted on X on October 24, came in response to a public call-out over the messages.

the $XMR emails were us. they were wrong. here is what happened and what changed. what happened – clients who bought xmr with their own money and withdrew it got an email asking for employer, source of funds and what they planned to do with their coins – no rule required it. someone saw a young client with a lot of money and called it a red flag. that is not a red flag. that is our customer and client what changed – those requests are withdrawn and the clients have been told nothing is required of them – the “what will you do with your coins” question is gone and unacceptable. where your money came from is a fair question. what you do with it after it leaves is not xmr stays listed. buy it here, take it home. that is the product.. we’ll keep making it better. thx for the call out.

— Arjun Sethi (@arjunsethi) October 24, 2026

What the Emails Asked, and Why Kraken Says They Were Wrong

According to Sethi’s account, the emails went to clients who had already bought XMR with their own funds and moved the coins off the platform. The message asked for three things: the customer’s employer, the source of the funds, and what they intended to do with the withdrawn coins. Sethi wrote that “no rule required it,” and traced the trigger to a single judgment call. “Someone saw a young client with a lot of money and called it a red flag. That is not a red flag. That is our customer and client.”

The correction is procedural as much as it is reputational. Sethi said the requests have been withdrawn and the affected clients have been told nothing is required of them. The question about what a customer would do with their coins after they left Kraken is “gone and unacceptable,” he wrote.

The Line Kraken Now Draws

The episode turns on a distinction Kraken is now making explicit: the origin of funds is a legitimate compliance question, but their destination is not. “Where your money came from is a fair question. What you do with it after it leaves is not,” Sethi wrote. That framing separates the anti-money-laundering obligation that exchanges actually carry from an inquiry into a customer’s post-withdrawal activity, which Kraken has no legal requirement to police and now says it will not.

Monero remains listed. “XMR stays listed. Buy it here, take it home. That is the product,” Sethi wrote, adding that Kraken will keep improving the product. The confirmation matters because Monero is the most prominent privacy coin, and its availability on major exchanges has been a recurring point of tension as regulators pressure venues over anonymity-enhancing assets.

What the Walkback Does Not Settle

The correction is limited to Kraken’s own conduct. It does not change the broader regulatory environment for privacy coins, and it does not mean other exchanges will follow. Sethi’s statement resolves one episode at one venue; the questions of whether and how exchanges should gather information on self-custodied privacy-coin withdrawals remain open across the industry.

Monero traded near $602 with a market capitalization of about $11.3 billion on October 24, up roughly 2% over the prior 24 hours and about 11.5% over the prior week, according to CoinGecko. The token has traded in the range of roughly $584 to $606 over the past day, and sits below its January 2026 record near $798. The walkback is a customer-service and compliance-policy event, not a market event; the price figures are context, not a reaction to the statement.

Kraken’s retreat from the withdrawal questions lands in the middle of a longer conversation about how exchanges treat privacy coins, a subject BlockchainReporter has tracked through Monero’s privacy trade and the exchange’s own regulatory expansion. The next observable signal is whether other venues that have restricted or questioned Monero activity adjust their own approaches, and whether any regulator weighs in on post-withdrawal questions of the kind Kraken has now disowned.