Monero climbed to $552 this week, its highest price since February, after THORChain activated native XMR support and opened a trustless swap route that bypasses centralized exchanges entirely. The token is up about 43% over the past month, according to data cited by CryptoPotato and CoinMarketCap, and it is doing this while most exchanges refuse to list it.
The mechanics matter more than the price. THORChain’s integration allows direct, cross-chain XMR swaps without wrapped assets. A trader can move bitcoin into monero in one transaction, with no custodian holding the coins in between and no exchange account required. That is the first time Monero has had deep decentralized liquidity on that scale, and it lands just as the regulated perimeter closes around the token.
The delisting wall
Roughly 73 exchanges have delisted privacy coins, and the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Regulation bars regulated providers from handling them from July 2027. Kraken scheduled XMR removal for its UAE platform in June, with withdrawals closing Sept. 14 and remaining balances liquidated between Sept. 15 and 25. Binance delisted Monero back in 2024, and LocalMonero, the flagship peer-to-peer marketplace, shut down the same year.
Cut off from centralized venues, Monero has retreated to rails no regulator lists: Haveno, a peer-to-peer exchange running over Tor with multisig escrow; atomic swaps through UnstoppableSwap; and now THORChain. None of these are frictionless. Haveno depends on a set of arbitrators and seed nodes, atomic-swap liquidity is still thin, and a THORChain pool is itself a chokepoint with its own regulatory exposure. But the direction is clear. Access is migrating from licensed venues to protocols that cannot easily be served papers.
The price case and the fragility
On-chain signals support the move. CoinGlass data showed exchange outflows exceeding inflows over several recent days, a pattern that reduces immediate sell pressure as holders move coins to self-custody. Monero’s open interest climbed 88% in 90 days to about $325 million, and funding has been positive on 89 of the last 90 days, which signals a crowded long trade.
That crowding is the risk. XMR still trades about 23% below its January high of $711, and derivatives positioned this heavily can unwind fast if momentum breaks. The rally also has a structural weakness behind it: Monero’s proof-of-work was demonstrably attackable in 2025, when the Qubic project rented majority hashrate by paying miners in its own token and reorganized the chain twice, including an 18-block reorg in September 2025. No double-spend theft was confirmed, but the episode showed the network’s security depends on hash power that can be bought.
Zcash took the other road
The contrast with Zcash frames the market split. ZEC has rallied more than 1,100% in three months on the back of Grayscale’s US spot ETF, a product that exists because Zcash was built to support compliance and viewable transactions. Monero cannot take that path. Its privacy is mandatory, not optional, which is exactly what regulators object to and exactly what its holders want.
Analysts now describe two privacy markets: one priced through Wall Street wrappers, the other through protocols that route around them. ZEC at $1,200 is the compliance trade. XMR at $552 is the exit trade. Both rallied in the same month, which suggests demand for transaction privacy is broad enough to lift both models, whatever regulators decide.
The technical roadmap gives the exit trade more cover. The FCMP++ upgrade, now on a beta stressnet reviewed by Trail of Bits, will replace ring signatures with proofs that use the entire ledger as the anonymity set, closing the main statistical weakness in current Monero transactions. The mainnet fork is expected late 2026 or early 2027. If it ships on schedule, the strongest remaining argument for tracing Monero weakens further.
Development funding remains the weak link in that plan. Monero’s Community Crowdfunding System raised roughly 35,900 XMR since 2020, and core development received about 2,294 XMR during 2025, close to $1 million at prevailing prices. That is a small budget for a protocol facing both a cryptographic upgrade and a hostile regulatory cycle, and it depends entirely on donations.
For now, the market has voted. Monero broke a descending trendline on Sept. 5 and confirmed the move with a close above $535, and the THORChain route gives buyers a place to acquire XMR without touching a regulated venue. Whether the rally holds through the FCMP++ fork is the next test.
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