Privacy Token Monero Breaks Another Record High, Nearing $700

Monero outperformed the broader crypto market on Tuesday, clocking another all-time high of $686.

• The token was delisted from multiple exchanges over the past two years due to money laundering and compliance concerns.
• It’s making a comeback in 2026, with privacy on blockchain expected to be a key theme in the coming year, as per Grayscale and a16z.
• Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said privacy coins will be key to the crypto reset of 2026.

Privacy coin Monero (XMR) notched another record high on Tuesday, rising to $686 amid a broader recovery across the cryptocurrency markets.

XMR’s price gained 16.5% over the past 24 hours and was last trading near $670 after briefly touching its new peak, according to CoinGecko data. The move extends momentum from Monday, when Monero surpassed $595 to set a record intra-day high. 

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around Monero remained in ‘extremely bullish’ territory over the past day amid ‘extremely high’ levels of chatter. 

Movement across the rest of the privacy coin sector was mixed. While ZCash (ZEC) only edged 0.9% higher to around $408, Dash (DASH) surged nearly 70%. Retail sentiment around the ZEC token was equally stable in ‘bullish’ territory, accompanied by ‘high levels of chatter over the past day. Retail sentiment around the DASH, on the other hand, jumped to ‘extremely bullish’ from ‘bullish’ territory, and chatter rose to ‘high’ from ‘normal’ levels.

What Is Monero?

Monero was launched in 2014 to address the transparency of Bitcoin’s public ledger. The project is designed for secure, untraceable, and fungible transactions on its open-source blockchain. Simply put, it can mask blockchain addresses and hide the transaction amounts.

Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT) hides the transaction amounts, while on the sender’s side, Monero uses “ring signatures” mix the true sender's input with decoys from past transactions. This creates a "ring" of possible signers. Decoys use real outputs drawn from a gamma distribution to produce realistic patterns.

For the receiver, it used stealth addresses generate a unique, one-time address for each transaction from the recipient's public address. This address is unlinkable to their main wallet on-chain. 

Why Exchanges Have Delisted Monero

Numerous exchanges were forced to delist XMR over the past two years as the government began implementing anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance measures. This included some of the biggest exchanges in the world like Binance, Kraken, and OKX.

Untraceable transactions on Monero prevent exchanges from monitoring or reporting suspicious activity, which could expose them to fines and legal risks.

Privacy Coins Return To Focus In 2026 

Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson said in a recent podcast that he expects the fourth generation of cryptocurrencies to be led by privacy tokens like Monero.

According to Grayscale, privacy solutions will be needed as blockchain technology goes mainstream. The firm said, in its 2026 outlook, that people don’t want their paychecks, taxes and spending habits on a transparent blockchain. It noted that for privacy coins to be successful, they may require better identity and compliance infrastructure, especially when it comes to decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

The crypto outlook for 2026 by a16z has similar undertones, calling it the “most important moat” in the industry. “Privacy is essential for most real-world use cases; a handful of privacy chains could own most of crypto,” it said.

XMR’s price has gained over 50% this week and nearly 250% over the past year.

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