Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced its intention to delist five stablecoins, including Tether's USDT, in compliance with the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). The exchange will fully delist USDT on March 31, 2025, and gradually remove support for other stablecoins such as PayPal USD (PYUSD), Tether EURt (EURT), TrueUSD (TUSD), and TerraClassicUSD (UST) in the European market.
Kraken's decision is part of a broader effort to ensure compliance with MiCA, which aims to create a regulatory framework for crypto assets in the European Union. The exchange has stated that these changes will allow it to continue providing its exceptional trading experience to European clients in the long term.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has set provisions to ensure a smooth and orderly delisting process. Kraken will implement these provisions in stages, starting with setting margin pairs involving the affected assets to "reduce-only" mode for clients in the European Economic Area (EEA) on February 13, 2025. This restriction will allow EEA users to reduce or fully close out existing margin positions.
By February 27, 2025, Kraken will put the affected tokens in "sell-only" mode, restricting EEA clients from generating deposit addresses for tokens like USDT but still supporting trading. On March 24, 2025, the exchange will halt all spot trading for the affected assets, closing all open orders and exchanges into other coins or fiat currencies.
Kraken has stated that all remaining EEA client holdings for these assets as of March 31, 2025, will be converted to an equivalent stablecoin. Any impacted assets for EEA clients deposited to existing addresses after the above deadlines will only be able to be withdrawn.
Kraken's announcement comes as another major exchange, Crypto.com, confirmed the delisting of USDT and nine other stablecoins starting January 31, 2025. Crypto.com will also give its users until the end of the first quarter of 2025 to convert the affected tokens to MiCA-compliant tokens. The ESMA has urged European crypto asset service providers (CASP) to start restricting MiCA non