Are Privacy Coins Legal? Zcash, Monero and the 2027 EU Rule

By Ryan Bethencourt, author of ZERO and PUNKS. Published November 6, 2026. Last updated November 6, 2026. Legal statuses verified against primary sources on October 20, 2026.

In May 2025, headlines announced that the European Union would ban privacy coins by 2027. The record is clearer than the headlines. This guide to privacy coin regulation in 2026 quotes the law itself, dates every status, and draws on ZERO: The Zcash Revolution, whose ninth chapter tells the story of the delisting years. For the wider map, start at the privacy and cryptography hub.

Are Zcash and Monero legal in 2026? Status at a glance

Yes. As of October 20, 2026, no US federal law and no EU-wide law bars individuals from holding Zcash or Monero, and privacy coin regulation restricts how regulated businesses handle them. The table lists every rule and case in this guide, with its status on that date.

Jurisdiction or actor	Rule or event	Who it binds	Status and dates	Source
US federal	FinCEN guidance on “anonymity-enhanced” crypto	Money transmitters	Issued May 9, 2019; does not ban holding	FinCEN
US federal	Proposed special reporting on international crypto mixing	US financial institutions	Proposed October 23, 2023; withdrawn October 6, 2026	Federal Register
SEC and ZEC	Inquiry that subpoenaed the Zcash Foundation	Zcash Foundation	Subpoena August 31, 2023; closed with no enforcement recommendation, announced January 14, 2026	Zcash Foundation
EU, MiCA Article 76(3)	No trading of coins with an “inbuilt anonymisation function” unless holders and history can be identified	Crypto trading platforms	Applies since December 30, 2024	EUR-Lex
EU, AMLR Article 79	No accounts allowing anonymisation “including through anonymity-enhancing coins”	Banks, financial institutions, crypto-asset service providers	Adopted; applies from July 10, 2027	EUR-Lex
Exchanges	Binance delisted XMR; Kraken ended XMR in the EEA; Binance announced the end of its ZEC warning tag; Coinbase lists ZEC	Each exchange’s customers	February 20, 2024; October 31, 2024; July 9, 2025	Decrypt, Kraken
Tornado Cash	OFAC sanctions on the mixer	US persons	Imposed August 2022; lifted March 21, 2025	Treasury
Roman Storm	Federal criminal case, New York	Roman Storm	Convicted on one count August 6, 2025; retrial on two deadlocked counts set for April 26, 2027	The Block
Samourai Wallet	Federal criminal case, New York	Keonne Rodriguez, William Lonergan Hill	Sentenced to five and four years in November 2025; no pardon reported	DOJ

Are privacy coins legal in the United States?

Yes. As of October 20, 2026, no federal statute bans owning, buying or using Zcash or Monero in the United States, and a regulated fund that holds ZEC has traded on NYSE Arca since August 25, 2026. US law reaches privacy coins through the businesses that handle them, through money laundering law and through sanctions.

The clearest federal text is FinCEN’s guidance of May 9, 2019, FIN-2019-G001. It covers coins “specifically engineered to prevent their tracing through distributed public ledgers (also called privacy coins),” and it states that “a person that uses anonymity-enhanced CVCs to pay for goods or services on his or her own behalf would not be a money transmitter under the BSA.” Businesses get no such pass: a money transmitter “cannot avoid its regulatory obligations” by using privacy coins.

Federal policy has moved toward privacy since 2025. On October 6, 2026, FinCEN withdrew its 2023 proposal to treat international crypto mixing as a “primary money laundering concern.” The notice quotes the July 2025 report of the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets: “the Trump Administration supports the ability of lawful users of digital assets to privately transact on a public blockchain.”

The Justice Department drew a line of its own. On August 21, 2025, Matthew Galeotti, then acting head of its Criminal Division, said, according to The Block: “Our view is that merely writing code without ill intent is not a crime.”

Coinbase lists ZEC, and our guide to the Zcash ETF, ZCSH, covers the fund that began trading on August 25, 2026.

The legal risk sits in three places, and none of them is ownership:

• Running a money transmitting business illegally, the charge in both the Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash cases, where prosecutors said the founders knowingly moved criminal proceeds.
• Laundering criminal proceeds, a crime whatever the asset.
• Dealing with sanctioned persons or addresses on the Treasury’s sanctions list.

Is the EU banning Zcash and Monero in 2027?

No. What headlines called an EU privacy coin ban is a rule for regulated businesses, not a ban on the coins or on owning them. From July 10, 2027, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), forbids regulated businesses, including crypto exchanges and custodians, from keeping accounts that allow anonymisation through anonymity-enhancing coins.

What does AMLR Article 79 say?

From July 10, 2027, AMLR Article 79 bars credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers from keeping anonymous accounts. The first subparagraph of Article 79(1) reads in full:

“Credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers shall be prohibited from keeping anonymous bank and payment accounts, anonymous passbooks, anonymous safe-deposit boxes or anonymous crypto-asset accounts as well as any account otherwise allowing for the anonymisation of the customer account holder or the anonymisation or increased obfuscation of transactions, including through anonymity-enhancing coins.”

Three details decide how it applies:

• Who it binds: credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers. Individuals are not in the sentence.
• What counts: Article 2 defines anonymity-enhancing coins as “crypto-assets that have built-in features designed to make crypto-asset transfer information anonymous, either systematically or optionally.” “Optionally” reaches Zcash’s opt-in privacy. The regulation names no coin.
• When: Article 90 says it “shall apply from 10 July 2027.” July 1, 2027, a date that appears in some coverage, belongs to a separate step: the deadline in Regulation (EU) 2024/1620 for the new EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority to begin choosing the firms it will supervise directly.

Which EU privacy coin rules already apply?

Two earlier EU rules have applied since December 30, 2024:

• MiCA Article 76(3) bars trading platforms from admitting coins with “an inbuilt anonymisation function unless the holders of those crypto-assets and their transaction history can be identified.”
• The Transfer of Funds Regulation requires providers to assess whether a self-hosted address is owned or controlled by their own customer when a transfer to or from it exceeds EUR 1,000.

Can I still self-custody privacy coins in Europe after 2027?

Yes. Nothing in the AMLR bars an individual from holding ZEC or XMR in a wallet they control. Recital 160 says the prohibition “does not apply to providers of hardware and software or providers of self-hosted wallets insofar as they do not possess access to or control over those crypto-asset wallets.”

What narrows is the road between a self-hosted wallet and regulated finance. Article 40 of the AMLR requires providers to assess the risk of transfers to and from self-hosted addresses, and the new EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority must issue guidelines on those checks by July 10, 2027. An EU resident can keep holding privacy coins, while fewer regulated platforms may offer a place to trade them.

Why did exchanges delist privacy coins?

Exchanges delisted privacy coins to manage compliance risk and get ahead of new rules, not because holding them became illegal. The exchanges that explained themselves cited their own listing criteria, compliance rules or regulatory change.

The timeline of privacy coin delistings, and the reversal that followed:

1. By 2018: Japan’s financial regulator had pushed exchanges there to stop offering privacy coins (ZERO, Chapter 9).
2. January 2021: Bittrex said it would delist ZEC, XMR and DASH (ZERO, Chapter 9).
3. September 2022: Huobi delisted ZEC, XMR and five other privacy coins, citing “the latest financial regulations” and its own token management rules.
4. January 4, 2024: Binance put its delisting-risk “Monitoring Tag” on ZEC.
5. January 5, 2024: OKX removed XMR, ZEC and DASH pairs that it said did not meet its listing criteria.
6. February 20, 2024: Binance delisted Monero.
7. October 31, 2024: Kraken halted XMR trading for clients in the European Economic Area, saying it had “no choice” because of “regulatory changes,” two months before MiCA’s trading-platform rules applied.
8. July 9, 2025: Binance announced the removal of ZEC’s Monitoring Tag, citing a recent review.
9. August 25, 2026: Grayscale’s Zcash ETF, ZCSH, opened for trading on NYSE Arca.

This passage from ZERO’s Chapter 9 shows how the Zcash community answered: by arguing that privacy and compliance could live in the same coin.

Zcash’s team and community responded in two ways: education and adaptation. On education, they doubled down on explaining the legitimate uses of privacy. They emphasized features like “view keys,” which allow Zcash users to share transaction details with auditors or exchanges selectively. This means a Zcash user can, for example, prove to an exchange compliance team the source of their funds without exposing their entire wallet history, a feature that arguably makes Zcash more compliant-friendly than Bitcoin (where one either shares everything or nothing). ECC and the Zcash Foundation frequently engaged with policymakers, highlighting how journalists, activists, and average citizens need financial privacy for safety. Their argument echoed voices like Coin Center’s Jerry Brito, who has argued that electronic cash is essential to a free society. If cash is tolerated despite its anonymity, why not digital cash? These efforts aimed to shift the narrative from “privacy coin = illicit” to “privacy coin = civil liberty.”

[lightly edited for accuracy]

Excerpted from ZERO: The Zcash Revolution: How Privacy Became the Next Bitcoin by Ryan Bethencourt, Chapter 9, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

The rest of the chapter shows the pressure building anyway. When the US Treasury put Tornado Cash’s smart contracts on its sanctions list in August 2022, privacy developers feared privacy coins would be next. The same year, SEC staff reviewing Grayscale’s Zcash Trust filings asked Grayscale to state that ZEC “may be a security.”

Huobi dropped ZEC, XMR and five more privacy coins in September 2022, and in August 2023 the SEC subpoenaed the Zcash Foundation. (Summarized from ZERO, Chapter 9.)

Each of those threads has since moved. Treasury lifted the Tornado Cash sanctions on March 21, 2025. The Zcash Foundation announced on January 14, 2026 that the SEC did not intend to recommend any enforcement action.

Coinbase, which first listed ZEC in November 2018, is the primary custodian for Grayscale’s ZCSH. Every pressure point aimed at Zcash itself stopped short of a ruling: a comment letter, a subpoena, an exchange’s own policy.

Why did Binance reverse its warning on Zcash?

Binance cited “a recent review” when it announced on July 9, 2025 that it would remove the delisting-risk Monitoring Tag it had put on ZEC on January 4, 2024. Lifting that 18-month warning was the clearest market signal that the compliance argument was landing. ZERO’s Chapter 10 tells it this way:

The first crack in the wall of skepticism appeared in July 2025.

For eighteen months, the “Monitoring Tag” on Binance had hung over Zcash like a Sword of Damocles. Traders refused to touch the asset, fearing that liquidity would vanish overnight.

Zcash’s advocates argued a nuanced point: Zcash was not Monero. While Monero was private by default and difficult to audit, Zcash offered “selective disclosure.” Through the use of viewing keys, a Zcash user could voluntarily reveal their transaction history to an exchange or a regulator to prove their funds were clean, while keeping that data hidden from the rest of the world. Zcash was compliant privacy.

In a surprise update on July 9, 2025, citing a recent review, Binance removed the Monitoring Tag from Zcash.

The market blinked. The fear of imminent delisting evaporated. It was a massive signal: privacy was not illegal. Non-compliance was illegal. And Zcash had proven it could thread that needle.

[lightly edited for accuracy]

Excerpted from ZERO: The Zcash Revolution: How Privacy Became the Next Bitcoin by Ryan Bethencourt, Chapter 10, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

“Privacy was not illegal. Non-compliance was illegal.” That is a fair summary of the law in both the United States and the EU, though Binance itself cited only “a recent review.” Monero also has a disclosure tool, covered next; our Zcash vs Monero guide compares the two in depth.

What are Zcash viewing keys, and do they help with compliance?

Viewing keys are read-only keys that let a Zcash user show shielded transactions to a chosen party, such as an auditor, an exchange or a tax adviser, without handing over the power to spend. Viewing keys can support compliance through this kind of selective disclosure, but Grey Area Labs found no published EU regulator guidance, as of October 20, 2026, on whether they satisfy any specific legal test.

ZIP 316, created on April 7, 2021, packages these keys into Unified Viewing Keys in two strengths, and neither can move funds:

• Full viewing key: “is intended to give access to view all transactions to and from the address.”
• Incoming viewing key: “is intended to give access only to view incoming payments (as opposed to change).”

The legal fit is closest with MiCA Article 76(3), which allows trading when holders and their transaction history “can be identified.” A viewing key is one technical route to that. The AMLR’s Article 79 instead targets how a provider runs its accounts.

Does Monero have a view key?

Yes. Monero’s Moneropedia says every address has a private view key that can be shared to reveal incoming transactions, and describes Monero as “private, optionally transparent.” Outgoing transactions, it notes, “cannot be reliably viewed” through the view key. The difference is the default: Zcash users opt into privacy and can opt into disclosure, while Monero users get privacy by default.

Our guide to what Zcash is and how its shielded pool works covers the basics.

Can Zcash transactions be traced?

Fully shielded Zcash transactions cannot be read from the blockchain, while transparent Zcash transactions are as traceable as Bitcoin’s. In a fully shielded transaction, sender, receiver, amount and memo are encrypted, and the public sees that a valid transaction happened, along with its fee, timing and size. Analytics firms follow coins as they cross between transparent addresses, exchanges and shielded pools.

That crossing is where tracing happens. In 2018, George Kappos, Haaroon Yousaf, Mary Maller and Sarah Meiklejohn showed in “An Empirical Analysis of Anonymity in Zcash” that simple heuristics based on usage patterns could “shrink its anonymity set considerably.” The cryptography held; the habits leaked.

On June 8, 2020, Chainalysis added Zcash to its tools and claimed it could provide the value and at least one address for over 99% of ZEC activity, The Block reported, when only 0.9% of transactions were fully shielded. Those are vendor claims about the 2020 network.

The network has changed. On September 30, 2026, 4.94 million ZEC, 29.1% of supply, sat in shielded pools, and 52.7% of non-coinbase transactions in the third quarter touched a shielded pool, according to Blockworks’ Q3 2026 Zcash report. Most of that ZEC sat in Ironwood, the pool opened on July 28, 2026 after a counterfeiting flaw was found in Orchard; see Zcash Ironwood and the AI-assisted Orchard audit.

What an observer sees	Bitcoin	Zcash, transparent	Zcash, fully shielded	Monero
Sender	Visible (pseudonymous)	Visible	Hidden	Hidden among 16 ring members
Receiver	Visible	Visible	Hidden	Hidden (stealth addresses)
Amount	Visible	Visible	Hidden	Hidden (RingCT)
Privacy by default	No	No	Opt-in	Yes
Disclosure tool	Not needed	Not needed	Full and incoming viewing keys	Private view key (incoming)

How do Zcash and Monero hide transactions differently?

Monero hides each spend inside a ring of decoys, while shielded Zcash hides it with a zero-knowledge proof. ZERO’s chapter on the Monero rivalry sets the two designs side by side.

Monero, built on the CryptoNote protocol, signs every spend inside a ring that mixes the real input with decoys, fixed at sixteen members since its August 2022 upgrade and smaller before that. Each payment goes to a one-time stealth address, and RingCT, added in 2017, conceals the amount. Privacy is mandatory, so no coin carries a readable history.

Zcash went to academic cryptography instead. A zk-SNARK proves that a shielded transaction obeys the rules while its sender, receiver and amount stay encrypted, so a shielded spend hides among every note in its pool rather than inside a small ring.

The cost was a trusted setup. Had anyone kept the secret randomness from Zcash’s six-person ceremony in 2016, they could have minted fake ZEC that nobody would detect, and Monero’s supporters treated that dependence on the ceremony as Zcash’s original sin. (Summarized from ZERO, Chapter 7.)

Neither design makes a coin illegal, and both leave the same edge for analytics firms: deposits and withdrawals at regulated exchanges. The trusted-setup worry has eased since 2022, because the Halo 2 proving system behind that year’s Orchard pool needs no ceremony; the older Sapling pool still uses its 2018 parameters.

Did the SEC ever charge Zcash?

No. As of October 20, 2026, no SEC enforcement action has alleged that ZEC is a security. The agency’s one known inquiry touching the Zcash Foundation ended in January 2026 with no enforcement recommendation, according to the Foundation.

For a holder, the record is short. SEC staff questioned ZEC’s status in 2022, in comments on the Grayscale Zcash Trust’s registration that Grayscale’s counsel answered in a June 28, 2022 response letter. The Foundation says it received an SEC subpoena on August 31, 2023. On January 14, 2026, its “Notice Concluding SEC Investigation” said the SEC “does not intend to recommend any enforcement action or other changes” in the matter, as The Block reported that day.

Seven months later, a ZEC fund listed on a US stock exchange; the filing-by-filing story of the Zcash ETF covers the SEC paperwork in detail. How ZEC compares with Bitcoin on privacy and supply is in our Zcash vs Bitcoin comparison (publishing November 11).

What happened to Tornado Cash and Roman Storm?

Tornado Cash is no longer sanctioned: Treasury delisted it on March 21, 2025, after an appeals court ruled that its immutable smart contracts could not be sanctioned as property. Its co-founder Roman Storm was convicted in August 2025 on one count and, as of October 20, 2026, faces a retrial on two others set for April 26, 2027.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the Ethereum mixer in August 2022, and six users sued. On November 26, 2024, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury that “Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the ‘property’ of a foreign national or entity.” Treasury then announced: “we have exercised our discretion to remove the economic sanctions against Tornado Cash.”

One line in that opinion leads back to Zcash: the contracts could not be owned, the court wrote, because “more than one thousand volunteers participated in a ‘trusted setup ceremony'” that removed anyone’s power to change them. Zcash launched with a six-person version of that ritual in October 2016.

Roman Storm’s criminal case is separate. His exact status on October 20, 2026:

• August 6, 2025: a Manhattan jury found him guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carries a maximum of five years.
• The jury deadlocked on conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions. He has not been convicted of either.
• His motion for a judgment of acquittal, argued in April 2026, was still pending in early October 2026, CryptoSlate reported; Grey Area Labs found no ruling on it as of October 20, 2026.
• On August 25, 2026, Judge Katherine Polk Failla set the retrial on the deadlocked counts for April 26, 2027, citing the pending motion, The Block reported.

The full story, from the sanctions to the retrial, is told in HYPE, Chapter Twelve, “Sanctioned Code”.

What sentences did Samourai Wallet’s founders receive?

Samourai Wallet’s co-founders, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, were sentenced in November 2025 to five and four years in prison, the Justice Department said. Both had pleaded guilty in July 2025 to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.

Judge Denise Cote sentenced Rodriguez on November 6, 2025 and Hill on November 19, 2025. On December 15, 2025, President Trump told Decrypt he would look at a pardon for Rodriguez; Grey Area Labs found no report of one as of October 20, 2026.

What do these cases mean for people who hold privacy coins?

Both cases charged the people who built and ran mixing services with, among other counts, conspiring to operate unlicensed money transmitting businesses. Neither charged anyone for holding or using a privacy coin. The open question, and the reason Storm’s acquittal motion and retrial matter, is how far criminal charges can reach developers of software they do not control.

Why is financial privacy normal?

Financial privacy is what people already expect from cash and bank statements; privacy coins extend it to public blockchains. The law punishes laundering, sanctions evasion and unlicensed money businesses, not the wish to keep a salary or a donation out of public view.

ZERO makes the case through history. In the 1990s the US government treated strong encryption as a munition; HTTPS later became the web’s norm, and nobody now thinks using it means hiding something. The book argues private money will follow the same path, a case that grows as central bank digital currencies raise the prospect of spending watched in real time. Our essay on why financial privacy matters develops it in full.

The idea is older than Zcash. Eric Hughes opened “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” in 1993 with “Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age,” a line traced in our history of the cypherpunks who invented private money.

The evidence on crime points the same way. A 2020 RAND Europe study, commissioned by the Electric Coin Company, “found no evidence of widespread illicit use of Zcash,” while urging continued vigilance. And the stakes are rising: as AI agents begin to hold wallets and pay for services, a shift documented in AGENT, Book One of The Frontier Series, every payment an agent makes on a transparent ledger becomes a public record of what its owner is doing.

Frequently asked questions

Is using a crypto mixer illegal?

In the United States, no federal law bans an individual from using a mixer for lawful purposes. Laundering criminal proceeds through one is a crime, dealing with a sanctioned mixer is prohibited, and running a mixing service that knowingly moved criminal proceeds led to the Samourai Wallet founders’ convictions for conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. FinCEN withdrew its 2023 mixing proposal on October 6, 2026.

Is Monero banned anywhere?

The restrictions verified for this guide bind businesses, not holders. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority prohibits issuing anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies and related virtual-asset activities in the Emirate. From July 10, 2027, EU Regulation 2024/1624 bars crypto-asset service providers from keeping accounts that allow anonymisation through such coins. Binance and Kraken have also delisted Monero in some or all markets.

Does the EU rule apply to self-hosted wallets?

No. Recital 160 of EU Regulation 2024/1624 says the prohibition does not apply to providers of hardware, software or self-hosted wallets that have no access to or control over the wallets. Transfers to and from exchanges still face checks: since December 30, 2024, providers must assess whether a self-hosted address is owned or controlled by their own customer for transfers above EUR 1,000.

Can exchanges list Zcash in the EU after 2027?

The law sets conditions rather than naming coins. MiCA Article 76(3) lets trading platforms admit coins with an anonymisation function only if holders and their transaction history can be identified. From July 10, 2027, AMLR Article 79 bars providers from keeping accounts that allow anonymisation through anonymity-enhancing coins. Grey Area Labs found no published regulator guidance applying either test to Zcash as of October 20, 2026.

When does the EU’s privacy coin rule take effect?

Article 90 of EU Regulation 2024/1624 says the regulation applies from July 10, 2027. The text published in the Official Journal on June 19, 2024 says July 10; July 1, 2027 is a separate deadline for the EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority to begin selecting the firms it will supervise directly. From July 10, 2027, Article 79 binds credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers.

Did the RAND study find Zcash used for crime?

RAND Europe’s 2020 report RR-4418 found no evidence of widespread illicit use of Zcash and only a minor Zcash presence on the dark web, where Bitcoin was still seen as dominant. The Electric Coin Company, which developed Zcash, commissioned the study, and RAND said vigilance against malicious use was still important.

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

1. Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 (Anti-Money Laundering Regulation), Official Journal of the European Union, June 19, 2024: Articles 2, 40, 79 and 90 and recital 160. EUR-Lex
2. Regulation (EU) 2024/1620 (Anti-Money Laundering Authority Regulation), Article 13(4). EUR-Lex
3. Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (Markets in Crypto-Assets), Articles 76(3) and 149. EUR-Lex
4. Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 (Transfer of Funds), Articles 14(5) and 16(2). EUR-Lex
5. FinCEN, “Application of FinCEN’s Regulations to Certain Business Models Involving Convertible Virtual Currencies,” FIN-2019-G001, May 9, 2019, section 4.5. FinCEN
6. FinCEN, withdrawal of the proposed special measure on convertible virtual currency mixing, 91 FR 63513, October 6, 2026. Federal Register
7. Davis Polk & Wardwell, for Grayscale Investments, response to SEC staff comments on the Grayscale Zcash Trust’s Form 10, June 28, 2022. SEC EDGAR
8. Zcash Foundation, “Notice Concluding SEC Investigation,” January 14, 2026. zfnd.org
9. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury, No. 23-50669, November 26, 2024. Opinion (PDF)
10. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Tornado Cash Delisting,” March 21, 2025. treasury.gov
11. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, Roman Storm verdict, August 6, 2025, as republished by IRS Criminal Investigation. irs.gov
12. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, “Founders Of Samourai Wallet Cryptocurrency Mixing Service Sentenced To Five And Four Years In Prison,” November 19, 2025. justice.gov
13. ZIP 316, “Unified Addresses and Unified Viewing Keys,” created April 7, 2021. zips.z.cash
14. RAND Europe, “Exploring the use of Zcash cryptocurrency for illicit or criminal purposes,” RR-4418-ECC, May 6, 2020. rand.org
15. George Kappos, Haaroon Yousaf, Mary Maller and Sarah Meiklejohn, “An Empirical Analysis of Anonymity in Zcash,” USENIX Security 2018. arXiv
16. Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, Virtual Asset Issuance Rulebook, “Prohibited Virtual Assets.” VARA
17. Kraken, “Support for Monero (XMR) in Europe.” Kraken Support
18. Monero Project, Moneropedia, “View Key.” getmonero.org
19. Eric Hughes, “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto,” March 9, 1993. activism.net
20. Blockworks Advisory, “Zcash Token Holder Report, Q3 2026.” PDF

Reporting

• The Block, “Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s retrial pushed back to April 2027,” August 26, 2026. Link
• CryptoSlate, “DOJ presses Tornado Cash prosecution as Treasury drops mixer reporting plan,” October 6, 2026. Link
• The Block, “‘Writing code without ill intent is not a crime,’ says US DOJ official following Tornado Cash verdict,” August 21, 2025. Link
• Decrypt, “Trump Says He Will ‘Look At’ Pardon for Samourai Bitcoin App Dev,” December 15, 2025. Link
• The Block, “Zcash Foundation says SEC has closed the book on its years-long probe into the organization,” January 14, 2026. Link
• The Block, “Chainalysis adds support for privacy coins in compliance software offerings,” June 8, 2020. Link
• Bitcoin Magazine, “Coinbase Launches Zcash Trading Services on Coinbase Pro,” November 29, 2018. Link
• Decrypt, “Crypto Exchange Huobi to Delist 7 Privacy Coins, Citing ‘Latest Financial Regulations’,” September 12, 2022. Link
• Decrypt, “Binance finalizes Monero delisting,” February 20, 2024. Link
• The Block, “OKX to delist slew of altcoins, including privacy coins Monero, Zcash and Dash,” December 29, 2023. Link
• U.Today, “Binance U-Turn: Popular Crypto Asset Saved From Delisting Risk,” July 9, 2025. Link
• Decrypt, “Grayscale Launches Zcash ETF Following Critical Privacy Flaw That Rocked the Cryptocurrency,” August 25, 2026. Link

Keep reading on Grey Area Labs

• Privacy and cryptography: every Grey Area Labs guide in one place
• Zcash vs Monero in 2026: how the two privacy coins compare
• Zero-knowledge proofs explained: the technology behind Zcash
• The complete history of Zcash, from the cypherpunks to ZODL
• The Decentralized Revolution Series: all of Ryan Bethencourt’s books

Legal statuses last verified: October 20, 2026. This guide is updated when a rule, ruling or case status changes.