Binance, the worlds largest crypto exchange, has announced it will be removing Monero trading pairs on February 20st. Along with Monero, Binance will also de-list Aragon, Multichain and Vai.

Monero price collapsed nearly 40% in just few hours following this announcement. It had previously hovered at relatively stable range for almost 2 years, and was sometimes jokingly referred to as a "privacy stablecoin".

While de-listings are nothing extraordinary and happen on regular basis, it is rare that such widely known cryptocurrency is de-listed, despite having substantial trading volume.

Binance has given no real explanation other than the canned standard non-response of "When a coin or token no longer meets this standard, or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it".

It is not clear what standards Binance are referring to, as their exchange offers to trade plenty of low quality and utterly useless tokens, as well as difficult, unstable and potentially catastrophically flawed de-fi products.

It takes no genius to deduce that this is purely result of regulatory and legal pressures of which Binance has got more than its fair share in recent months. Privacy preserving coins are treated as "hot potatoes" by most crypto businesses, because of their alleged use in criminal transactions.

For true crypto enthusiasts privacy is not only legal, but also essential feature of free market economy and fundamental human right.