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On the night of January 12, the price of the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) reached a new record, hitting nearly $598.5 according to data from the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange. By 14:20 Moscow time on the same day, the XMR price had slightly retreated to around $580. The previous peak was above $517, reached in May 2021.
Over the past 24 hours, the price of XMR has increased by almost 20%, while the price of its closest competitor, Zcash (ZEC), rose by 7%. During the same period, the prices of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) remained virtually unchanged, trading around $90.5K and $3.1K respectively, according to Coinmarketcap.
Since the beginning of the year, XMR quotes have risen by more than 30%, outperforming many major cryptocurrencies in terms of percentage growth. During this period, BTC grew by almost 2%, and Ethereum by 4%.
The dynamics of XMR since the start of 2026 are a continuation of the coin's growth in the previous year when it became one of the growth leaders among the largest cryptocurrencies on the market. As for most of 2025, the current rise in XMR has not been accompanied by any specific events or news. The coin grew without the institutional capital inflows seen with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, BNB, and others.
XMR ranks 12th in the Coinmarketcap ranking of the largest cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of nearly $10.5 billion and is the largest coin by market cap in the privacy sector, ahead of Zcash (ZEC) with $6.6 billion.
For most of the second half of last year, ZEC showed better performance than XMR, even briefly surpassing it in market capitalization. The Zcash price lost its growth momentum in November 2025, after reaching a local peak of around $730—since then, the price has fallen to $400. In early January 2026, selling pressure on ZEC intensified following the announcement that one of the cryptocurrency's teams of developers was leaving—the asset's price then lost about 20% in a few hours.
Ban on Anonymity
In Monero, anonymity is a basic and mandatory characteristic of all transactions; users cannot choose an alternative format for sending coins. This has led to a consistent refusal to list it by many major platforms, including Binance, OKX, and Bybit, due to pressure from regulators. As a result of exchanges delisting XMR, liquidity on trading markets stagnated for a long time.
Attention on Monero is driven by general interest in coins from the privacy sector, despite regulatory risks, as analysts from 10x Research noted, according to Coindesk.
For example, as of January 12, a ban on private cryptocurrencies, including Monero and Zcash, comes into effect from the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), according to new rules for digital asset circulation in the DIFC international financial zone.
The reason is the inability to ensure transaction transparency and compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and sanctions legislation.
At the end of 2025, the Bank of Russia proposed a concept for regulating the cryptocurrency and digital asset market, which included a ban on the acquisition of anonymous crypto-assets, i.e., those whose transaction chains cannot be traced.
This means such assets will be unavailable on Russian platforms, even to qualified investors. The regulator did not name specific coins but characterized them as cryptocurrencies "whose smart contracts hide information about token transfers to recipients".
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