The Philippines Bans Monero and Zcash on Regulated Platforms: The Signal of a Global Trend

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The central bank of the Philippines has just dealt a severe blow to privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies. Under the guise of compliance with international anti-money laundering standards, the decision illustrates a regulatory dynamic that extends well beyond this single country — and should alert anyone who holds or uses assets like Monero or Zcash.

What the Memorandum Says

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s central bank, has approved Memorandum M-2026-023, signed by Deputy Governor Lyn Javier. The text orders all licensed virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to stop listing and supporting “anonymity-enhancing virtual assets.” The memorandum does not name any token specifically, but the targeted category unambiguously covers Monero, Zcash, and Dash — cryptocurrencies designed to make transaction tracing difficult or impossible.

The measure took effect immediately, with no transition period. Beyond simply delisting these assets from platforms, VASPs must now evaluate each listed token against six compliance pillars: issuer credibility, market maturity, use case, transparency and security, liquidity and reserves, and legal compliance. They must also define internal thresholds that automatically trigger a delisting when an asset no longer satisfies these criteria.

What This Concretely Changes

The memorandum does not criminalize the private holding of Monero or Zcash, nor peer-to-peer transfers conducted outside regulated platforms. What disappears is institutional access: regulated on- and off-ramps (buying, selling, depositing, withdrawing on a licensed platform) will no longer be able to handle these assets.

In practical terms, if you held privacy coins on a Philippine platform subject to a BSP license — including Coins.ph/Betur, Maya Philippines, PDAX, GoTyme Bank, or UnionBank — you must transfer them to a personal wallet or convert them before the platform is forced to delist them.

With over 16 million cryptocurrency users in the country, the impact will be felt on a large scale in the domestic market, even if the effect on the global price of XMR or ZEC should remain limited — the Philippines representing only a marginal fraction of the global liquidity of these assets.

FATF Alignment, the Universal Justification

The BSP justifies its decision through explicit alignment with the standards of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), the international body that sets the rules for combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Staying on good terms with the FATF is not optional for most central banks — a poor rating can affect an entire country’s access to international financial circuits.

This is exactly the same justification that has already led the European Union, Japan, and South Korea to progressively exclude privacy coins from their regulated platforms over recent years. The Philippine decision is therefore not an isolated case: it is the confirmation of a de facto standard that is becoming widespread — if a jurisdiction wants to operate an internationally recognized crypto market, privacy-enhanced assets no longer have a place in it.

A Tension That Nobody Truly Resolves

It is telling that even actors who support the decision acknowledge the legitimacy of the use case it seeks to restrict. The crypto head at GCash, one of the country’s largest fintechs, explicitly acknowledged that Monero and Zcash “exist for legitimate reasons” and that privacy constitutes “a founding value of crypto: the ability to transact without surveillance.” He nonetheless supported the measure, arguing that the Philippines — a country heavily dependent on remittance flows — could not position itself as a trusted financial infrastructure while allowing the free circulation of anonymizing assets.

This tension is not resolved; it is simply decided in favor of the regulatory perspective: remittance volumes and international credibility weigh heavier than the legitimate privacy argument, every time the trade-off arises.

The Logical Next Step: Migration Toward Self-Custody

The pattern repeating itself from one jurisdiction to another is now clearly readable. The pattern is almost always identical: financial privacy remains legal at the individual level, but gradually becomes impossible to exercise through institutional channels. Self-custody is not yet targeted — but each new jurisdiction that follows this model further reduces the space in which these assets can circulate without regulatory lock-in.

We detailed in depth the technical workings of these blockchains and the reasons why they have become a prime target for regulators in our comprehensive guide on anonymous blockchains — ring signatures, zk-SNARKs, and the real limitations of these technologies.

Exchanging Outside the Closing Circuits

As regulated platforms withdraw from the privacy coin market one after another, the role of non-custodial, data-collection-free infrastructure becomes central for anyone wishing to continue using these assets without depending on a VASP subject to a jurisdiction that could change its policy overnight.

Arpokrat Swap allows you to exchange Monero, Zcash, and all privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies without registration, without IP log collection, and without cookies — whether you access the platform via clearnet or through our .onion address. No jurisdiction can remove what we never collect.

This Philippine decision is probably not the last of its kind this year. The question is no longer whether other countries will follow the same path — recent history suggests they will — but how much time remains before institutional access to privacy coins becomes the exception rather than the norm.