After its Mimblewimble upgrade, Litecoin (LTC) has been put on notice by two of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The upgrade does indeed allow for anonymization of transactions, which tends to displease regulators.
Litecoin may no longer be welcome in South Korea
Following its recent upgrade offering the ability to anonymize its transactions, Litecoin (LTC) finds itself targeted by two of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The exchanges in question are Bithumb and Upbit.
The latter put forward a Korean law on the obligation to report information during transactions. However, since the implementation of the Mimblewimble technology at block 2 257 920, on May 19th, it is now possible to make a transaction anonymous on the network.
In order to comply with the regulation, there is therefore a good chance that Bithumb and Upbit will remove the asset from their respective platforms, following these warnings. Korbit and Coinone, the other two major platforms in South Korea, have, a priori, not yet given their position regarding Litecoin.
The anonymity brought by Mimblewimble
The name of this technology is a nod to a spell from the Harry Potter universe and translates into French as “Langue de plomb”. This is a reference to the anonymous aspect of a blockchain integrating Mimblewimble. Indeed, from a blockchain explorer, a block appears to be a single transaction, without giving more details about the content of the inputs and outputs.
In general, regulators and by cause, centralized platforms, tend to be hostile towards anonymous cryptocurrencies. Obviously, the fetish argument of the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing is often invoked.
Faced with this pressure, exchanges may find themselves forced to withdraw these types of assets from trading. While Litecoin is gradually falling in the capitalization rankings as time goes by, this is a risky bet for its adoption.
