India's Financial Intelligence Unit has directed cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country to immediately suspend all trading, deposits and withdrawals of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH), citing money-laundering and terrorist-financing concerns linked to the assets' anonymity features.
What Happened: Privacy Coins Banned
Market analyst MartyParty reported the development on social media platform X, noting that FIU-IND issued the directive to all registered crypto exchanges.
The regulator's order requires platforms to delist the three tokens, block all deposits and withdrawals, and disable associated trading pairs.
At issue are the cryptographic techniques these assets use to obscure transaction details, wallet balances and user identities.
Monero employs ring signatures to hide senders and receivers. Zcash offers shielded transactions that conceal transaction data. Dash provides optional privacy features.
Regulators argue these capabilities make it difficult for exchanges to comply with know-your-customer and transaction-monitoring requirements. The directive follows an October 2025 order in which FIU-IND instructed internet service providers to block access to 25 offshore crypto exchanges that failed to register in India.
Only a handful of platforms remain fully compliant, including Binance, Mudrex, Coinbase, CoinSwitch and ZebPay.
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Why It Matters: Market Resilience Amid Pressure
Despite the regulatory action, the targeted tokens showed short-term price gains in the 24 hours following the announcement.
Monero traded at $524, up 3.5% on the day. Zcash rose 2.2% to $372. Dash recorded the strongest daily performance, jumping 11.6%.
In general, DASH has emerged as the top-performing cryptocurrency among the 300 largest digital assets last week, surging more than 100% and surpassing privacy-sector rival Monero amid renewed investor interest in financial privacy tools and expanding merchant acceptance.
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