---
title: Monero in 2026: where it can be swapped, what changed
description: XMR delistings with dates from the exchanges' own notices, FCMP++ status on 12 October 2026, and how an account-free swap between two addresses works.
url: https://sablebolt.io/blog/monero-in-2026-where-it-can-be-swapped
---

[Monero & Zcash](https://sablebolt.io/blog)

# Monero in 2026: where it can still be swapped and what changed

Sablebolt Team 28 October 2026 9 min read

Contents

1. The delistings, as the exchanges announced them
2. Where XMR changes hands now
3. What "account-free swap between two addresses" means for an XMR holder
4. A worked example: 2 XMR to USDT on TRON
5. What changed in the protocol, as of 12 October 2026
6. Checklist before swapping XMR
7. FAQ

Between December 2023 and October 2024 three of the largest exchanges removed Monero from their order books for all or part of their customers. If you hold XMR, the practical question is not why — each notice gives its own reason — but what is still open to you and how it works. This post lists the delistings as the exchanges themselves announced them, describes where XMR changes hands now, explains what an account-free swap between two addresses means for an XMR holder, and reports the state of Monero's FCMP++ upgrade from the project's own channels. Every date was checked on 12 October 2026 against the primary page named next to it.

## The delistings, as the exchanges announced them

The table contains only what the exchange's own notice states. It is not a list of every exchange that ever removed XMR; it is the three notices we read on 12 October 2026.

| Exchange | Notice published | Trading stopped | Deposits | Withdrawals | Where we read it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OKX | 29 December 2023 | XMR spot pairs removed on 5 January 2024, in windows between 04:00 and 12:00 UTC | Suspended from 27 December 2023, 08:00 UTC | Suspended from 5 March 2024, 08:00 UTC | okx.com help centre, "OKX to delist several spot trading pairs" |
| Binance | 6 February 2024 | All XMR pairs (XMR/BNB, XMR/BTC, XMR/ETH, XMR/USDT) at 03:00 UTC on 20 February 2024 | Not credited after 21 February 2024, 03:00 UTC | Not supported after 20 May 2024, 03:00 UTC | binance.com support announcements, "Binance Will Delist ANT, MULTI, VAI, XMR on 2024-02-20" |
| Kraken (EEA clients only) | 2024; the support article was last updated 31 March 2025 | Trading and deposits of all XMR markets halted on 31 October 2024, 15:00 UTC, for clients registered in the European Economic Area | Halted with trading | Deadline 31 December 2024, 15:00 UTC; remaining XMR converted to BTC and distributed by 6 January 2025 | support.kraken.com, "Support for Monero (XMR) in Europe" |

Three details matter when you read this table:

- **The OKX notice named ZEC and DASH pairs in the same action.** ZEC-USDC, ZEC-BTC, ZEC-USDT, DASH-BTC and DASH-USDT left on the same day, 5 January 2024. Monero was not singled out; the stated basis was the exchange's listing criteria and user feedback.
- **The Binance notice covered four tokens** and gave the exchange's periodic review as the reason. It did not mention privacy.
- **The Kraken notice is regional.** It applies to clients registered in the EEA and says the exchange had no choice but to delist XMR there because of regulatory changes.

We did not find a primary notice that reverses any of the three, so as of the check date all three stand as written.

## Where XMR changes hands now

With those order books gone, XMR moves between people in three ways. Only one of them is what sablebolt.io does, and the other two are described so that you can tell them apart.

**1. Exchanges that still list it.** Some exchanges outside the regions above still run XMR markets, each with its own account rules and, often, a per-region asset list. The only reliable source is the exchange's own asset page on the day you need it. We do not keep such a list here, because we cannot verify it continuously.

**2. Peer-to-peer trades.** Two people agree a price and send to each other, sometimes through an escrow. The counterparty risk and the price are whatever the two parties make them.

**3. An account-free swap between two addresses.** You give one address to receive on, you get one address to send to, and the chains do the rest. The next section explains what that means in practice for XMR.

≈ 11–24 min 5 confirmations on Monero

[Swap XMR to USDT TRC-20](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/usdt-trc20)

## What "account-free swap between two addresses" means for an XMR holder

1. You open a route, say [XMR → USDT TRC-20](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/usdt-trc20) , enter the amount of XMR and paste the TRON address that should receive the USDT.
2. The site gives you a one-time Monero deposit address and a status link. There is no sign-up step and no account that holds the swap; the link is the record.
3. You send the XMR from your own wallet to the deposit address. The swap starts when the deposit has 5 Monero confirmations, which takes about 11–24 minutes.
4. The USDT is paid to the address you gave, and the status page shows the payout hash.

What does not happen: nobody holds your XMR before you send, and nothing is kept for you afterwards. If you lose the status link, the deposit hash is enough for support to find the swap.

For the opposite direction — getting XMR — the mechanics are the same with the chains swapped. On [BTC → XMR](https://sablebolt.io/swap/btc/xmr) the wait is on the Bitcoin side (2 confirmations, about 21–44 minutes), the XMR is paid to the Monero address you gave, and your wallet then holds it for 10 Monero blocks before it is spendable. [BTC to XMR step by step](https://sablebolt.io/blog/btc-to-xmr-step-by-step) walks that route minute by minute.

### The XMR routes on the site

| Route | What you wait for before the rate is set | Typical wait |
|---|---|---|
| [XMR → BTC](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/btc) | 5 Monero confirmations | ≈ 11–24 min |
| [XMR → ETH](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/eth) | 5 Monero confirmations | ≈ 11–24 min |
| [XMR → USDT TRC-20](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/usdt-trc20) | 5 Monero confirmations | ≈ 11–24 min |
| [XMR → USDT ERC-20](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/usdt-erc20) | 5 Monero confirmations | ≈ 11–24 min |
| [XMR → USDT BEP-20](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/usdt-bep20) | 5 Monero confirmations | ≈ 11–24 min |
| [XMR → SOL](https://sablebolt.io/swap/xmr/sol) | 5 Monero confirmations | ≈ 11–24 min |
| [BTC → XMR](https://sablebolt.io/swap/btc/xmr) | 2 Bitcoin confirmations | ≈ 21–44 min |
| [ETH → XMR](https://sablebolt.io/swap/eth/xmr) | 15 Ethereum confirmations | ≈ 4–10 min |
| [USDT TRC-20 → XMR](https://sablebolt.io/swap/usdt-trc20/xmr) | 1 TRON confirmation | ≈ 2–5 min |
| [USDT ERC-20 → XMR](https://sablebolt.io/swap/usdt-erc20/xmr) | 15 Ethereum confirmations | ≈ 4–10 min |

The [Monero coin page](https://sablebolt.io/coin/monero) carries the same figures and the address format.

## A worked example: 2 XMR to USDT on TRON

Numbers are made up to show the arithmetic; the form shows the live ones.

- Suppose 1 XMR = 150 USDT when you open the form and the TRON payout fee shown is 1 USDT. You enter 2 XMR: 2 × 150 = 300, minus 1, so "You get (estimate)" shows **299 USDT**.
- You paste a TRON address (T…, 34 characters), click "Get deposit address", and the status page shows a Monero deposit address of 95 characters and the amount to send.
- You send 2 XMR from a subaddress in your wallet. Within a minute or two the page moves to "Confirming", with a link to the Monero explorer. The explorer shows that the transaction exists and its confirmation count; it does not show the amount, by Monero's design.
- At 5 confirmations — say 17 minutes later — the rate is read. If XMR moved 1 % down in those minutes, the rate is 148.5: 2 × 148.5 − 1 = **296 USDT** delivered. If it moved 1 % up: 2 × 151.5 − 1 = **302 USDT**, and the page shows the surplus next to the delivered amount.
- "Sending" shows the payout hash on tronscan, where the USDT transfer to your address is public: amount, time, the payout address it came from. "Done" follows after TRON confirms, usually within a minute.

The whole thing takes about twenty minutes, nearly all of it Monero confirmations. The size of the difference between estimate and payout is the market's move inside that window; [Floating rate: what changes between the estimate and the payout](https://sablebolt.io/blog/floating-rate-estimate-vs-payout) has the general case.

## What changed in the protocol, as of 12 October 2026

The delistings are about exchanges. Monero itself kept moving, and three items from the project's own channels matter for someone who holds or swaps XMR.

**Releases.** The current software line is 0.18.5. Monero 0.18.5.3 "Fluorine Fermi" was released on 6 October 2026 (getmonero.org blog), described as a highly recommended bug-fix release: peer-to-peer connection stalls, transaction relay after restarts, wallet validation for cold and multisig signing. It is not a hard fork and changes nothing about addresses or confirmations.

**Custom unlock time is being retired.** A post on getmonero.org dated 10 May 2026 announced that the custom transaction unlock-time feature is to be deprecated at consensus with FCMP++, and that nodes already decline to relay such transactions. This is unrelated to the 10-block lock on every received output, which stays; swaps never used custom unlock times.

**FCMP++ is on a test network, not on mainnet.** Full-chain membership proofs replace the current ring of decoy outputs with a proof that the output being spent is one of all outputs on the chain. Its status from the project's own channels:

- The GitHub milestone "fcmp++ hf" in monero-project/monero showed 69 % complete with 13 open issues, last updated 8 October 2026.
- The log of the Monero tech meeting of 5 October 2026 (monero-project/meta) records that the FCMP++ fork is activated on beta stressnet v3, with a second fork a little over 200 blocks away that stops allowing legacy transactions on that test network.
- The 10 May 2026 post says in plain words that a FCMP++ fork date is not set at the time of writing. We found no later post on getmonero.org that sets one.

For a swap user this means: the address you paste today — 95 characters, starting with 4 or 8 — is unchanged, the 5-confirmation rule is unchanged, and when a mainnet fork date is announced, the thing to plan for is a wallet update before that date. We will update the [Monero coin page](https://sablebolt.io/coin/monero) when the project announces one.

## Checklist before swapping XMR

- You are sending from a wallet you control, to a one-time deposit address shown on the status page — not to an exchange's deposit address you found elsewhere.
- Status link saved before you close the tab.
- For XMR out: you have 11–24 minutes for 5 confirmations before the rate is set, so send straight after creating the swap.
- For XMR in: the recipient is a 95-character Monero address starting with 4 or 8, and you have 20 minutes in hand after "Done" for the 10-block lock.
- Any amount that must arrive on the other side has a margin for the market's move during confirmation.
- Your Monero wallet software is current — 0.18.5.3 on the check date.

## FAQ

Is Monero delisted everywhere?

No. The three notices above are specific to those exchanges, and the Kraken one is specific to EEA-registered clients. For any other exchange, check its own asset page.

Did Binance or OKX give privacy as the reason?

Not in the notices we read. Binance cited its periodic review of listed assets; OKX cited its listing criteria and user feedback. Kraken's EEA article cites regulatory changes.

What is the difference between a swap here and an exchange deposit?

An exchange deposit goes into an account that the exchange holds for you. A swap here goes from your address to a deposit address and out to the address you named; there is no account on either side of it, and the status link is the only record.

Does the FCMP++ upgrade change the address I use?

Nothing published by the project as of 12 October 2026 changes the address formats a user pastes. When a fork date is set, update your wallet before it; that is the planning item.

Why does sending XMR take 11–24 minutes but receiving it feel longer?

Sending waits 5 Monero confirmations before the rate is set. Receiving waits on the other chain first — up to 44 minutes for two Bitcoin confirmations — and then your wallet holds the new XMR for 10 blocks, about 20 minutes, before you can spend it.

Can I see the amount on the Monero explorer?

No. The explorer linked from the status page shows that the transaction exists, its block and its confirmations. The amount and the addresses are hidden by Monero's design; your own wallet is where the amount appears. [What a block explorer shows about a swap](https://sablebolt.io/blog/what-a-block-explorer-shows-about-a-swap) goes through this chain by chain.

## Related posts

- [Monero & Zcash BTC to XMR step by step: confirmations, timing and the 10-block lock Two Bitcoin confirmations, the swap, then ten Monero blocks before you can spend. The whole timeline, with the address formats and explorer checks. 21 October 2026 8 min](https://sablebolt.io/blog/btc-to-xmr-step-by-step)
- [Monero & Zcash Monero subaddresses, integrated addresses, payment IDs: which to paste Monero gives you three kinds of address and a retired payment ID. Which one the swap form accepts, which one your wallet should hand out, and what to do when an exchange shows something else. 28 October 2026 8 min](https://sablebolt.io/blog/monero-subaddresses-integrated-addresses-payment-ids)
- [How swaps work What a block explorer shows about a swap, and what it doesn't Two hashes, two chains, one status page: chain by chain, what each explorer displays about a swap's deposit and payout, and the facts that live nowhere on-chain. 28 October 2026 9 min](https://sablebolt.io/blog/what-a-block-explorer-shows-about-a-swap)