Monero (XMR) Explodes 30%, Setting a New High After Being Silent for a Long Time

Yesterday, the "ancient" privacy coin Monero ($XMR) suddenly exploded after being silent for a long time. It soared 30% in a single day, and the price rose to $329, setting a new high since 2021. What is this 11-year-old coin? And why did it suddenly soar?

The most OG privacy coin

In 2013, Nicolas van Saberhagen published the "CryptoNote" protocol. Monero was born on this basis in April 2014 and switched to RandomX in 2019.

Monero uses technologies such as ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT to hide the sender, receiver, and amount of transactions. This high degree of anonymity gives it an advantage in privacy protection, and Monero's modular code structure has been praised by Wladimir J. van der Laan, one of the Bitcoin Core maintainers.

However, while maintaining privacy, it also makes it difficult to meet the regulatory authorities' anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) requirements. As one of the most well-known privacy coins, it is a coin with two sides. On the one hand, its focus on privacy, decentralization and scalability is loved by many people who love "liberalism", but on the other hand, it has become a hotbed for criminals.

Criminals' favorite

At the end of summer 2016, with the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, the police department mastered the Bitcoin tracing technology in the long struggle. Major dark web markets such as AlphaBay began to abandon Bitcoin and adopt Monero, which is more difficult to trace. North Korea's hacker group Lazarus Group also likes to use Monero to "launder" assets, which made Monero's market value break through "from 5 million US dollars to 185 million US dollars" for the first time in 2016 and the rapid growth of transaction volume.

2020 is the second hot period for Monero. This year, the terrorist organization ISIS updated its website, indicating that it would no longer accept Bitcoin donations but the more private token Monero. The reason is that if ISIS's Bitcoin reserves are too large, it may be difficult for the terrorist organization to transfer or cash them out. A report from Chainalysis also confirmed this, saying that ISIS holds less than $100,000 in Bitcoin, and most other terrorist organizations are in a similar situation.

In the same year, darknet market sales increased by 70% year-on-year. Monero became one of the main payment tools due to its privacy characteristics, accounting for 45%, almost the same as Bitcoin.

Darknet transactions, scams, ransoms for kidnapping, and exit routes for hackers to steal coins, it can be said that Monero is notorious. With the large-scale adoption of "underground transactions", the price of XMR tokens has risen from $50 at the beginning of 2020 to $150 at the end of the year, and reached $450 by mid-2021.

Key to Freedom

Although Monero has long been associated with "crime", it is only a technical tool. The Monero development team has always adhered to the "code neutral" position. They emphasize that "Monero is designed for everyday use by ordinary people, and any technology can be abused, such as cash." They do not cooperate with criminal activities and have no connection with criminal organizations.

Therefore, from another perspective, it implements Bitcoin's "freedom of transaction" and is deeply supported by many geeks who support the spirit of "liberalism", "privacy first", and "decentralized anti-censorship". Many people in the community believe that it is the real Bitcoin.

John McAfee, who founded the first antivirus software McAfee, is one of them. "Monero is one of the truly anonymous cryptocurrencies, while Bitcoin is not truly anonymous." He expressed his recognition of Monero's technical strength and privacy features on many occasions during his lifetime. Monero's anonymity and untraceability are highly consistent with the concept of "privacy liberalism" that McAfee has long advocated.

Even "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver "rebelled". In his first public interview after being released on bail in 2024, Roger said that he decided to give up Bitcoin and instead favored tokens such as Monero that provide more privacy. "Most people today use custodial wallets, which are not really wallets at all, but just an account that is no more private than your account at Bank of America or Paypal. But fortunately, there are other cryptocurrencies like Monero that provide more privacy protection."

In areas where cryptocurrencies are active, some e-commerce or independent merchants will