--- title: "Monero XMR and Zcash ZEC: delistings, liquidity and USD vs USDT" language: en type: empirical canonical: "https://whycoinmoves.com/en/research/privacy-coin-delistings-and-quote-currency-isolation" published: 2026-10-20 reviewed: 2026-10-20 --- # Monero XMR and Zcash ZEC: delistings, liquidity and USD vs USDT Read Monero XMR and Zcash ZEC market data after delisting notices. Separate regional access, venue liquidity and USD versus USDT price exposure. WhyCoinMoves Research · 2026-10-20 Observation / evidence scope: 2023-05-25/2026-09-23 ## Separate historical source pools; not a matched XMR–ZEC experiment | Series / measure | Observation | | --- | --- | | ZEC OKX spot USDT closed hours / 已收盘小时 | 7284 / 7284 | | ZEC first–last UTC hour / 首末 UTC 小时 | 2025-11-24 12:00 → 2026-09-23 23:00 | | Coinbase USDT/USD observed hourly closes / 小时收盘观测 | 29208 | | USDT/USD observed close range / 收盘范围 | 0.99601–1.00507 | | Median absolute deviation from USD 1 (%) / 偏离 1 美元绝对值中位数 | 0.0320 | | Maximum absolute deviation (%) / 最大绝对偏离 | 0.5070 | ## A delisting changes access in a specific market Kraken’s notice describes stopping XMR trading and deposits for EEA clients on 31 October 2024. Its scope is regional, even though several quote pairs were affected. Reading that notice as a worldwide disappearance of XMR would lose the most important qualification. Pair, product, client location and effective date belong in any coverage statement. Restricted access can fragment the observable market, but proving thinner global liquidity requires comparable venue depth or spread observations before and after the restriction. Candle counts and a venue notice alone cannot quantify that effect. ZEC and XMR also have distinct market histories; a shared privacy label does not make them interchangeable controls. ## What the saved prices actually show The ZEC/USDT spot archive contains all 7,284 expected hourly closes between the displayed endpoints. The separate Coinbase USDT/USD archive contains 29,208 observed hourly closes from 25 May 2023 13:00 UTC to 23 September 2026 23:00 UTC. Coverage of the latter is not complete and no gaps were filled. Its closing prices range from 0.99601 to 1.00507 dollars per USDT. These are hourly closes, not intrahour extremes. The median absolute distance from one dollar is 0.0320%, and the largest observed closing distance is 0.5070%. A stablecoin quote is therefore not an exact dollar identity throughout this saved sample. These descriptive distances are not arbitrage returns: fees, transfer access, timing and available size have not been measured. ## Keep the venue, instrument and quote together A USD-denominated asset return and a USDT-denominated return include different quote exposure. Converting a USDT observation to dollars requires the corresponding USDT/USD price at the same time. Changing both venue and quote at once adds further differences. Comparing XMR/USD with ZEC/USDT cannot isolate any one of those effects. This site labels XMR’s live hourly baseline as Kraken · USD and keeps it separate from USDT pools. Where the venue returns base volume and a volume-weighted average price, displayed quote turnover is derived from those fields; it is not an independently observed dollar trade ledger. The adapter choice documents our data source, not a claim that other XMR markets do not exist. ## What remains unmeasured No matched historical XMR/USD and XMR/USDT panel has been assembled for this article. We therefore do not publish a cross-quote XMR volatility ranking, a quantified delisting premium or a global liquidity-loss percentage. Those questions require the same asset at matching times, clear access scope and appropriate exchange-rate observations. ## Does an XMR delisting mean Monero is unavailable everywhere? No. Read the venue, affected pairs, client jurisdiction and effective dates. The Kraken notice discussed here is specific to EEA clients. It cannot be expanded into a statement about every market worldwide. ## Can USD and USDT crypto return series be mixed? They need explicit conversion and matching timestamps before comparison. The saved USDT/USD closes vary around one dollar, and changing venue can add another difference. Comparing XMR/USD with ZEC/USDT does not isolate a quote-currency effect. ## Limitations Different assets, venues and observation periods remain separate. ZEC archive coverage is not market-wide liquidity; quote variation is not causal evidence about privacy coins. No historical matched XMR comparison or executable arbitrage model is presented. ## Sources and data access - [Kraken: XMR restrictions in the EEA]() - [Coinbase candle data definitions and missing-interval warning]() - [OKX historical candle documentation]() Aggregate data only; raw archives are not redistributed. Source fingerprints identify the files used, not independent verification. [JSON]() ## Related live archives - [XMR]() - [ZEC]() - [BTC]() - [Exchanges]() - [Market watch]() ## Live prior 30-day hourly baseline — separate from the historical study Only the current watch list is shown, up to 12 assets. Missing or stale estimates remain unavailable. Venue and quote currency are kept separate; beta needs matching BTC data. Hourly statistics are not minute-move probabilities. Cutoff (UTC): 20/10/2026, 16:16 | Asset | Source | Bars / expected | Median \|r\| (%) | P99 \|r\| (%) | BTC Beta | Matched N | Last close (UTC+8) | Status | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BTC | OKX · USDT | 720/720 | 0.1475 | 1.2330 | 1.0000 | 719 | 20/10/2026, 16:00 | Ready | | SOL | OKX · USDT | 720/720 | 0.2810 | 2.0501 | 1.4254 | 719 | 20/10/2026, 16:00 | Ready | | SUI | OKX · USDT | 719/720 | 0.5272 | 3.6107 | 2.0159 | 718 | 20/10/2026, 15:00 | Ready | | DOGE | OKX · USDT | 720/720 | 0.3218 | 2.2931 | 1.5534 | 719 | 20/10/2026, 16:00 | Ready | | ETH | OKX · USDT | 719/720 | 0.1933 | 1.4709 | 1.1272 | 718 | 20/10/2026, 15:00 | Ready | | XRP | OKX · USDT | 720/720 | 0.2671 | 2.3892 | 1.4427 | 719 | 20/10/2026, 16:00 | Ready | | PEARL | — | 0/720 | — | — | — | 0 | Not available | Unavailable: incomplete or stale | | AERO | — | 0/720 | — | — | — | 0 | Not available | Unavailable: incomplete or stale | | WLD | OKX · USDT | 481/720 | — | — | — | 480 | 20/10/2026, 15:00 | Unavailable: incomplete or stale | | NEAR | OKX · USDT | 720/720 | 0.7887 | 4.6857 | 2.1948 | 719 | 20/10/2026, 16:00 | Ready | | CARDS | OKX · USDT | 720/720 | 1.0459 | 8.7874 | 1.6168 | 719 | 20/10/2026, 16:00 | Ready | | QTC | — | 0/720 | — | — | — | 0 | Not available | Unavailable: incomplete or stale | [Research]() [Methods and limitations]()