Recently, I've been watching the $XMR trend, and its increase has already more than doubled, which is truly surprisingly fierce. This kind of counter-market performance must have a reason, so I looked into what has happened recently.

First, there's a major reshuffle within the privacy coin sector. As the arch-rival of Monero, Zcash recently exploded — Electric Coin Company(ZEC's core development team) had internal governance disagreements, and even abandoned some protocol development work. The result was straightforward: $ZEC dropped about 25% in a week. This was a big blow to privacy coin investors because the funds in this sector are originally vertically flowing in a funnel-like manner. Once confidence collapses, money quickly finds new destinations. The drop in Zcash released funds that instead flowed into Monero, which has more stable governance and a higher degree of decentralization. This explains why XMR has been so strong.

But that's not all. In early 2026, the global regulatory direction changed. On the surface, it seemed tighter, but in fact, it became a catalyst for privacy coins. On January 1, the EU officially implemented DAC8 rules, requiring all crypto service providers to disclose customer transaction details to tax authorities. With this, users' attitudes toward financial privacy began to shift — from a previous ideological demand to a practical functional necessity. Now, mainstream exchanges and public chains( like Ethereum and Bitcoin) are becoming more transparent, and more people are realizing that perhaps a way is really needed to protect their financial privacy. Monero, which defaults to privacy as a core feature, appears especially attractive in this context.