Behind the $1.5 billion surge in Monero's market value in one day, why are hackers no longer fond of Bitcoin?
Yesterday, the ancient privacy coin Monero ($XMR) suddenly erupted after a long period of dormancy. It surged by 30% in a single day, with the price peaking at $329, setting a new high since 2021. What is this 11-year-old coin? And why did it suddenly skyrocket?
In 2013, Nicolas van Saberhagen published the 'CryptoNote' protocol, and Monero was born in April 2014 based on this foundation, switching to RandomX in 2019.
Monero employs technologies such as ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT to obscure the sender, receiver, and amount of transactions. This high level of anonymity gives it an advantage in privacy protection, and Monero's modular code structure has received praise from Wladimir J. van der Laan, one of Bitcoin's core maintainers.
The year 2020 marked the second surge for Monero. That year, the terrorist organization ISIS updated its website to show it no longer accepted Bitcoin donations and instead switched to the more private token Monero.
The reason is that if ISIS had a large amount of Bitcoin, it could be difficult for the terrorist organization to transfer or cash it out. A report from Chainalysis confirmed this, stating that ISIS held less than $100,000 in Bitcoin, with most other terrorist organizations in similar situations. Also, in the same year, darknet market sales increased by 70% year-on-year, with Monero becoming one of the main payment tools due to its privacy features, accounting for 45%, nearly on par with Bitcoin.
On social media, blockchain detective ZachXBT stated, 'Nine hours ago, a suspicious transaction occurred at a certain address, amounting to 3,520 Bitcoins (approximately $330.7 million). Subsequently, these funds began to be laundered through more than six instant trading platforms and were exchanged for Monero, causing the price of Monero to surge by 50%'
