Behind Monero's market value surged by $1.5 billion a day: Why do hackers no longer like Bitcoin?

Author: BUBBLE

Yesterday, the "Ancient" privacy coin Monero ($XMR) suddenly broke out recently when it was silent for a long time. The price soared by 30% in a single day, with the highest price reaching US$329, and the price hit a new high since 2021. What is this old currency from 11 years ago? And why did it suddenly soar?

The most OG privacy coins

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

Monroe used technologies such as ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT "ring confidential transactions" 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 is appreciated by Wladimir J. van der Laan, one of the core maintainers of Bitcoin.

But while maintaining privacy, it also makes it difficult for regulators to meet the requirements of anti-money laundering "AML" and anti-terrorism financing "CTF". As one of the most well-known privacy coins, it is a token with two sides. On the one hand, its focus on privacy, decentralization and scalability is deeply loved by many people who love "liberalism", but on the other hand, it has become a hotbed for criminals.

The "favorite" of the criminal

In the late summer of 2016, with the arrest of "Silk Road" founder Ross William Ulbricht, the police department mastered the traceability of Bitcoin during a long struggle. Major dark web markets like AlphaBay have begun to abandon Bitcoin’s massive adoption of the harder-to-track Monero. North Korea’s hacker group Lazarus Group also loves to “clean” assets with Monero, which has enabled Monero to see its first market value break of “from $5 million to $185 million” and rapid growth in transaction volume in 2016.

2020 is the second time that Monero is hot. This year, the terrorist organization ISIS updated its website, showing that it will no longer accept Bitcoin donations and will instead be a more private token, Monero. The reason is that if ISIS’s Bitcoin reserves are too large, it may be difficult for a terrorist organization to transfer or cash it out, as a Chainalysis report confirmed this, which says ISIS holds less than $100,000 in Bitcoin, and most other terrorist organizations are similar. It was also in the same year that dark web 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 flush with Bitcoin.

Dark web transactions, fraud, ransoms for kidnapping, and exit paths for hackers to steal coins can be said to be infamous with the large-scale adoption of "underground transactions". In 2020, the token price of XMR also rose from $50 at the beginning of the year to $150 by the end of the year, and reached $450 by the middle of 2021.

The key to freedom

Although Monero has long been bound to "crime", it is just a technical tool. Monero's development team has always adhered to the "code neutrality" stance. They stressed that "Monero is designed for daily use by ordinary people, and any technology can be abused, such as cash." They do not cooperate with criminal acts, nor do they have any connection with criminal organizations.

Therefore, from another perspective, it implements Bitcoin's "freedom of transactions" 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 real anonymous cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin is not truly anonymous." During his lifetime, he expressed his recognition of Monero's technical strength and privacy characteristics on many occasions. Monero's anonymity and untraceability are highly consistent with McAfee's long-standing concept of "privacy liberalism".

Even Roger Ver "Bitcoin Jesus" has "rebelled". In his first public interview after Roger was released on bail in 2024, he said that he had decided to give up Bitcoin and instead be optimistic about tokens like Monero that can provide more privacy. "Most people are using custodial wallets nowadays. In fact, this is not a wallet at all, it's just an account, and its privacy is no higher than your account at Bank of America or Paypal. Fortunately, there are other cryptocurrencies like Monero that can provide more privacy protection."

In areas where cryptocurrencies are active, some e-commerce or independent merchants will accept Monero as a payment method, such as some technology-related online stores "hardware wallets or cryptocurrency peripheral technology products" or offline retail stores. Community member Schmidt also posted his receipt of using Monero to purchase low-fat organic cocoa beverages in Spar.

Note: SPAR is one of the world's largest food retail chains, founded in 1932 by Adriaan van Well in the Netherlands. It has more than 13,900 stores in 48 countries. The Kreuzlingen store purchased by members of the community is located in Switzerland and has attracted much attention for accepting cryptocurrency assets such as Bitcoin and Monero.

When the comment section evaluated Monero as a cryptocurrency used to "launder money", the well-known on-chain detective ZachXBT retorted, "No, I often use Monero to pay", and we can know that he is also one of the enthusiasts of Monero.

Short-term Pump or Value Discovery?

The stolen funds flow in

On-chain detective ZachXBT posted on social media, "Nine hours ago, a suspicious transfer occurred at an address, with the amount of 3,520 bitcoins (about 330.7 million US dollars). The funds then began to be laundered through more than 6 instant trading platforms and exchanged for Monero, causing the Monero price to soar by 50%."

This also allowed the token's short contract to close positions in large quantities, and traders were forced to repurchase assets, further increasing upward pressure on the basis of growing spot demand. These common factors may have contributed to the sudden rise in Monero's recent period.

Project progress is good

Some analysts believe that the growing expectation of the Monero EP159 and EP160 upgrade proposals is also one of the factors that have risen. This proposal can make Monero more compliant and friendly, allowing users to provide proof of transaction validity without exposing sensitive private information. The community believes that this upgrade may allow Monero, which has been removed from major CEXs since the EU's updated anti-money laundering regulations in 2024, to be relisted on compliance top CEXs such as Binance and Coinbase.

In addition, the first DeFi project Tari will appear in the Monroe ecosystem. The project plans to merge and mine with Monroe and go online on the main network on May 6. Many people in the Monroe community are looking forward to the emergence of this project.

When the tool is created, the concept of good and evil gives it more meanings. Monero is like a microcosm of the current cryptocurrency, weighing between "freedom" and "regulation" and wandering between "human rights" and "crime." The kindness and sinisterness of human nature are infinitely magnified here, just as Einstein said when commenting on the atomic bomb, "Science and technology are a double-edged sword, which can not only benefit mankind but also destroy the world."