Privacy-Focused Cryptos Hunted Down by Forensics and Exchanges

As Japan and South Korea — two of the largest cryptocurrency exchange markets in Asia — are increasingly pressuring exchanges to delist privacy-focused crypto assets, and concerns are rising that it could lead to more markets, at least in Asia, to follow the trend of the two major countries.

Meanwhile, Blockchain analytics firms like CypherTrace appear to be developing technologies to better understand the structure of privacy-focused coins and to trace transactions initiated by cryptocurrencies. Speaking to Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for CypherTrace said that the company expects to see some progress by 2020 on privacy coins, stating, “We look forward to some results on privacy coins in 2020.”

But as things stand, analytics firms are still not close to finding a solution for tracing transactions processed by some privacy coins like Monero, which may make it more difficult for privacy coins to remain listed on strictly regulated exchanges that…