Uphold ceases support for USDT, GUSD, TUSD due to European new law: report

Cloud-based multi-asset platform Uphold has begun informing some of its customers about its decision to suspend support for Tether’s USDT and Gemini’s GUSD, as well as other stablecoins.

Multi-asset trading platform Uphold will cease support for a number of stablecoins due to Europe’s new regulatory framework known as the Crypto-Asset Markets Act (MiCA).

According to the Uphold email notification shared by Commercialization Blockchain Research Center (CBRC) founder Antony Welfare in the X post, the New York-based company will no longer support USDT, GUSD, DAI, FRAX, TUSD and USDP as of July 1. Reference was made to “new European Union rules on stablecoins” as the reason behind the move.

As of the date of this story, Uphold has not made any public statement on the matter. Crypto.news has reached out to the comments and will update the article if we hear back.

Following the suspension, Uphold will continue to support Circle’s stablecoins USDC and EURC, as well as PYUSD, issued by Paxos for PayPal. The company urged its customers to convert their holdings in affected stablecoins by June 27. Uphold added that any remaining balances in these stablecoins will be automatically converted to USDC on June 28.

‘Extremely vulnerable’ regulation

MiCA came into force in June 2023, but the provisions regarding asset-backed tokens and e-money tokens will be valid from June 30. According to the new regulation, no stablecoins in the European Union can be offered to the public or “accepted” for trading on a trading platform for crypto assets unless the issuer is authorized in the territory and has published a “white paper” approved by the national competent authority.

The new regulatory environment has raised concerns among some cryptocurrency managers. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in an interview with The Block that MiCA “can not only make a stablecoin issuer’s business extremely complex, but also make EU-licensed stablecoins extremely vulnerable and riskier to operate.”

Under the upcoming MiCA rules, some stablecoins will face restrictions as unauthorized stablecoins.

Binance will not immediately delist unauthorized stablecoins, but will limit their availability to EEA users only in certain products such as launch pool and earnings, and will recommend:

— Binance (@binance) June 3, 2024

Crypto exchange Binance said in early June that it would not remove unauthorized stablecoins from its spot market but would limit their availability to certain products for European Economic Area (EEA) users and promote regulated stablecoins as an alternative.

In mid-May, reports emerged that Kraken, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, was also “actively reviewing” plans to delist USDT, a stablecoin issued by Tether. Later, Mark Greenberg, head of Kraken’s global asset growth and management business, denied delisting rumors, saying the exchange was still examining “all options to offer USDT under the future regime.”