Kraken stáhl kontroverzní požadavky na údaje o zaměstnavateli a způsobu využití XMR. Spoluvýkonný ředitel Arjun Sethi potvrdil, že Monero zůstává zalistované.
Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the exchange’s Monero emails were “wrong” and confirmed that XMR stays listed, after Kraken asked customers who bought Monero with their own money and withdrew it to disclose their employer, source of funds, and what they planned to do with the coins. Sethi said no rule required the inquiries, and that the questions have now been withdrawn. The statement, posted on X on October 24, came in response to a public call-out over the messages.
the $XMR emails were us. they were wrong. here is what happened and what changed. what happened – clients who bought xmr with their own money and withdrew it got an email asking for employer, source of funds and what they planned to do with their coins – no rule required it. someone saw a young client with a lot of money and called it a red flag. that is not a red flag. that is our customer and client what changed – those requests are withdrawn and the clients have been told nothing is required of them – the “what will you do with your coins” question is gone and unacceptable. where your money came from is a fair question. what you do with it after it leaves is not xmr stays listed. buy it here, take it home. that is the product.. we’ll keep making it better. thx for the call out.
— Arjun Sethi (@arjunsethi) October 24, 2026
What the Emails Asked, and Why Kraken Says They Were Wrong
According to Sethi’s account, the emails went to clients who had already bought XMR with their own funds and moved the coins off the platform. The message asked for three things: the customer’s employer, the source of the funds, and what they intended to do with the withdrawn coins. Sethi wrote that “no rule required it,” and traced the trigger to a single judgment call. “Someone saw a young client with a lot of money and called it a red flag. That is not a red flag. That is our customer and client.”
The correction is procedural as much as it is reputational. Sethi said the requests have been withdrawn and the affected clients have been told nothing is required of them. The question about what a customer would do with their coins after they left Kraken is “gone and unacceptable,” he wrote.
The Line Kraken Now Draws
The episode turns on a distinction Kraken is now making explicit: the origin of funds is a legitimate compliance question, but their destination is not. “Where your money came from is a fair question. What you do with it after it leaves is not,” Sethi wrote. That framing separates the anti-money-laundering obligation that exchanges actually carry from an inquiry into a customer’s post-withdrawal activity, which Kraken has no legal requirement to police and now says it will not.
Monero remains listed. “XMR stays listed. Buy it here, take it home. That is the product,” Sethi wrote, adding that Kraken will keep improving the product. The confirmation matters because Monero is the most prominent privacy coin, and its availability on major exchanges has been a recurring point of tension as regulators pressure venues over anonymity-enhancing assets.
What the Walkback Does Not Settle
The correction is limited to Kraken’s own conduct. It does not change the broader regulatory environment for privacy coins, and it does not mean other exchanges will follow. Sethi’s statement resolves one episode at one venue; the questions of whether and how exchanges should gather information on self-custodied privacy-coin withdrawals remain open across the industry.
Monero traded near $602 with a market capitalization of about $11.3 billion on October 24, up roughly 2% over the prior 24 hours and about 11.5% over the prior week, according to CoinGecko. The token has traded in the range of roughly $584 to $606 over the past day, and sits below its January 2026 record near $798. The walkback is a customer-service and compliance-policy event, not a market event; the price figures are context, not a reaction to the statement.
Kraken’s retreat from the withdrawal questions lands in the middle of a longer conversation about how exchanges treat privacy coins, a subject BlockchainReporter has tracked through Monero’s privacy trade and the exchange’s own regulatory expansion. The next observable signal is whether other venues that have restricted or questioned Monero activity adjust their own approaches, and whether any regulator weighs in on post-withdrawal questions of the kind Kraken has now disowned.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
AUTHOR
Jide Idowu is a skilled freelance writer with expertise in blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and digital finance. Known for his ability to break down complex topics into clear, engaging content, Jide crafts articles, blog posts, and analyses that resonate with both beginners and seasoned professionals. His work spans a wide range of subjects, from emerging crypto trends to in-depth explorations of blockchain innovations. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for educating readers, Jide is a reliable voice in the rapidly evolving world of digital assets.
THORSday Community Podcast #244 ft. CBarraford, KentonC137 & Patriotsounds | October 22, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DRv3.21 was about 13 hours from adoption. Chad expects to cut v3.21.1 next week once two more pull requests merge, and once the paused churn resumes, $XMR is ready to launch.In its second week, SwapKit Rev-Share spent $841.60 in credits on swaps that earned THORChain $3.72K in fees, a 4.4x return that held steady as spending doubled.Chad is turning block time into an adjustable mimir so THORChain can step down from 6 seconds to 2 seconds one second at a time, and step back up without a new binary.About 20% of nodes have started voting to end rewards to liquidity pools. Kenton wants a formal ADR, while Denny and Chad made the case for protocol-owned liquidity (POL) instead.Chad unveiled Visual Review, a tool that turns any code change into an explainer page, and the solvency checker halted a small IBC exploit on its own at a loss of about $800.1. Monero Is Two Pull Requests and a Churn AwayAt recording time, v3.21 was roughly 13 hours from adoption. Chad said two more pull requests need to merge before the team can cut v3.21.1, which he expects next week. The churn is currently paused for issues that v3.21 fixes, so the remaining sequence is: adopt v3.21 and v3.21.1, restart the churn, and launch Monero.
"Once that's out and the churn is churning, we're live." (Chad)A community member asked whether THORChain could be a reorg target, citing the Qubic selfish-mining incidents on Monero. Chad said it comes down to confirmation counting. He described a method JP created years ago: wait enough blocks that the block rewards in that window exceed the value coming into the protocol. More confirmations mean slower trades, but because THORChain has no decentralized competition for $XMR and competes mainly with centralized exchanges, speed matters less at launch. Chad leans toward a higher confirmation count to start, with the exact number still to be researched. For contrast, he recalled Erik Voorhees telling him that ShapeShift used a single confirmation on Bitcoin for its whole history without a reorg incident.
Shielded Zcash addresses are not coming soon. Chad used AI to generate a full implementation in about 12 hours, but it added roughly 20,000 to 30,000 lines of code, and the devs pushed back on the complexity. What tipped Chad was Maya Protocol's data: only about 15% of its Zcash volume uses shielded addresses. The Zcash community is also working on rotating transparent addresses, which Chad expects would need no changes on THORChain's side. He will be at Zcash Foundation's Zcon7 in Cancún next week.
Beyond Monero, BSC is now on Router v6 alongside Base and Avalanche, and churnless chain additions are targeted for the next release or the one after. Asked about Zano, Chad said it is still well back in the queue. He named Substrate-based chains, Bittensor's $TAO and Dash as the short list after Monero, which he called by far the hardest chain THORChain has integrated.
2. SwapKit Rev-Share Holds at 4.4x in Week TwoChad returned to Ray's SwapKit Revenue Share dashboard for a second weekly check-in. Under the 20% Rev-Share, SwapKit has accrued $7.03K in credits and spent $841.60 of it on quote discounts, leaving a $6.19K balance. Swaps carrying those discounts earned THORChain $3.72K in fees, a 4.4x return, slightly below the 4.6x of week one. The discounted swaps added up to $1.96M in volume across 778 swaps, an average of about $2,500 each.
Chad's summary was that the numbers held. Spending roughly doubled over twice the time, and the ratio barely moved, which the hosts called a great sign.
The open question is still scale. Chad expects SwapKit to raise its spending after v3.21, and the hosts noted that the release fixes an affiliate code bug that should let SwapKit add more partners. If the ratio stays around 4.4x to 4.5x, he said raising the share from 20% to 25% would create the flywheel discussed last week, where every dollar SwapKit spends returns more than a dollar to its bucket, until SwapKit's market saturates. Week one is covered in last week's recap.
3. Should THORChain End LP Rewards?Kenton raised a vote already in motion: roughly 20% of nodes, about 27, have started voting to cancel rewards going to liquidity pools. Because it would be a big change to THORChain's economics, he suggested someone write a formal ADR.
The backdrop: for months the incentive pendulum sent nearly all rewards to nodes, then 20% of system income began flowing to POL. Now the pendulum is swinging back, and rewards are reaching legacy LPs again. Kenton's concern is that LPs need $RUNE to outperform to break even, but that same outperformance erodes the value of their accumulating rewards through impermanent loss. He believes POL should replace LPs over time. He also steelmanned the other side: if $RUNE never outperforms enough, those rewards could help pay LPs back. Boone has proposed paying rewards out to LPs directly to shield them from impermanent loss, and wrote in chat that most LPs would not benefit from rewards at current prices because synth leverage is so severe.
Denny, speaking as an LP, backed POL over LP rewards. Ray's POL Income dashboard shows 1.23M $RUNE of system income collected for POL, about $791,500 at current prices. Kenton added that $RUNE tracks volume, volume needs liquidity, and THORChain has lost roughly 75% to 80% of its liquidity since THORFi. He would end the rewards if it were his call, while acknowledging that node operators are also struggling on low yields. Node income is tracked on Ray's THORChain Financials page.
"We are grinding our way out of this hole. It's happening." (Denny)Chad favored POL because it is not mercenary capital. If there were another hack, POL would likely be first in line to absorb losses, rather than the Treasury, which paid for most past incidents. He said he wished THORChain had launched with both streaming swaps and POL from day one. For background, see the recap covering POL's launch.
4. A Gradual Path to 2-Second BlocksChad is revisiting 2-second blocks. The original code was merged about a year and a half ago, then pulled back because a hard switch felt risky and difficult to undo. His new approach is to make block time a mimir rather than a code change, so THORChain can move one step at a time and roll back if needed without releasing a new binary.
"We can walk it down from 6 seconds, what it is now, to 5 seconds to 4 seconds to 3 seconds to 2 seconds." (Chad)His analysis of mainnet suggests 2 seconds is a safe target: about 99% of blocks already complete in under 2 seconds. Around 1.5 seconds might be possible with Cosmos SDK performance gains, but Chad would be cautious. The mimir will be hard-coded to a range of 1 to 10 seconds, and going below 1 second would mean forking or replacing CometBFT, the consensus layer underneath.
On paper, the benefits are clear: streaming swaps would execute three times faster, arbitrage bots would rebalance pools more often, and the Rujira app layer would gain from faster blocks. Chad wants to measure how much of that shows up in practice before pushing lower, and hopes to move ahead within the next month or two. The idea first resurfaced in last week's recap.
5. The Quote-Versus-Fill Test Gets CheaperThe test proposed last week, comparing swap providers' quotes with what users actually receive, is moving forward with Treasury support. Kenton said he and Ray are working out the procedure, and credited Ray for running the numbers. The original plan of $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000 swaps would have meant a few million dollars in volume and, once fees and spreads were included, a cost of a couple hundred thousand dollars. The revised plan uses only $1,000 swaps: around 400 to 500 of them, roughly $400,000 to $500,000 in volume, for a cost of a few thousand dollars. Kenton said THORChain already wins larger quotes, and the low end of the size curve is where it misses volume, so that is the range worth studying.
On marketing, Kenton listed THORChain on a no-KYC exchange directory and asked the community to leave a review. THORChain will appear on the directory's exchange list once it has an XML quote feed, which Liquify agreed to build. He also asked the Unstoppable Wallet devs about Tor (.onion) and I2P addresses for THORChain Swap and set up a THORChain page on Bitcointalk.
Kenton's focus remains AI search. thorchain.org sits in the top 500 of about 120,000 sites on an AI-visibility tracker, though still at a B grade, and new affiliates requesting API keys say they found THORChain through ChatGPT, Claude or Google search. He is also looking into ChatGPT's new advertising, which could open a paid channel crypto lacks on Google.
After a press outlet turned a post about a 140 $RUNE Zcash pool bug into a negative story, Kenton said issues will still be disclosed on Discord and GitLab, but the main X account does not need to spotlight every minor bug.
6. Visual Review Turns Code Changes Into ExplainersChad unveiled Visual Review, a skill he built that turns a code change into a web page explaining it visually. He showed it on his dynamic fee merge request. The page includes a five-minute explainer video with chapters, interactive graphs, and a narrated walkthrough of every changed line, with fuzzy search by file name, function or snippet of code. The goal is to let anyone, technical or not, understand a change before it merges.
"It's my attention and my focus that is the most valuable resource in this process." (Chad)The merge request he showed runs to about 27,000 lines, of which roughly 1,483 are logic changes; the rest are tests and documentation. Huginn will generate these pages automatically, with a button at the top of each pull request. Chad has open-sourced the skill on GitLab, and Kenton added a Visual Review link to the thorchain.org footer during the show.
The dynamic fee change itself replaces the current step search, which moves 1 bps at a time, with a bracket search. Instead of trying 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 bps, the model jumps from 1 bps to 20 bps, then tests the midpoint and narrows in. Bigger jumps make the market's reaction clearer and reach the best fee in fewer epochs. The change also lets the team switch an affiliate such as Symbiosis off and on to reset its data. Chad hopes to merge it for v3.22.
7. The Solvency Checker Stops an IBC ExploitTHORChain had what Chad called a tiny mini hack this week. A bug in the IBC implementation let an attacker make THORChain believe it had received $ATOM it never received. The first fake deposit was about 16 $ATOM, roughly $20, sent with a bad memo that triggered a refund. The attacker kept doubling that amount across five transactions.
The solvency checker only acts once a shortfall reaches $500, a buffer that avoids halting the chain over small discrepancies. Once that line was crossed, it halted things within about 20 to 30 seconds, with no human involvement, after an attack lasting seven or eight minutes. Chad expects the roughly $800 shortfall to be refilled from the reserve, probably in the next release. In chat, a viewer offered to open a merge request setting the threshold at $42,069.
"It's a success story in my mind, even though it's only $800." (Chad)Chad also wants more math-based safety checks. AI recently helped solve how to account for synthetics in LUVI, a measure that separates pool earnings from price moves and should almost always rise, so it can now act as an invariant that flags broken pool accounting without knowing the cause. LUVI checks were added to regression testing last week, and Chad plans to add them to mainnet code eventually, though it is not a top priority.
A community member also asked why the reserve holds about 25M $RUNE. Chad was not sure and suspects it relates to accounting from the summer hack. Kenton thought a store migration in v3.21 might address it. Long term, Chad said, the reserve would have a cap, with anything above it paid out as system income.
8. Faster CI and Huginn's Growing RoleChad shared a summary of recent changes to THORChain's continuous integration (CI), the automated tests every code change must pass. The team now runs nearly three times as many CI jobs per day, has added more than 1,300 unit tests, and introduced fuzz testing, mutation testing and adversarial-quorum testing. Typical CI time fell from 97 minutes to 24 minutes, and even the worst cases now finish in under 50 minutes, down from waits as long as seven hours.
Asked whether a large language model could formally verify the THORChain stack using Lean, Chad said Lean is a language for mathematical proofs and he does not think it applies to code. Instead, Huginn reviews every change and continuously audits the codebase, tracking which files it has scanned. By Chad's count, Huginn has found more security issues in the past year than every human contributor combined, by orders of magnitude, and it currently reports only the two highest priority levels. A full audit by the security team also turned up a few dozen issues, which are being addressed.
The bottleneck is human review. A community developer recently opened six or seven merge requests; generating one can take five minutes, while reviewing it can cost several engineers 45 minutes each. Chad estimated THORChain could merge 10 to 20 times more code per release without that constraint, though he stressed humans still review everything. Huginn now runs on its own Treasury-funded accounts, which freed Chad's own AI usage for projects like Visual Review.
"If you write code without having AI involved in that process, you're probably doing it wrong." (Chad)What to Watchv3.21 adoption, the v3.21.1 cut expected next week, and the churn resuming ahead of the $XMR launch.Whether SwapKit scales its Rev-Share spending after v3.21, whether the return holds near 4.4x, and whether the share moves to 25%.Whether an ADR on ending LP rewards is written, and how many nodes join the vote.The 2-second block mimir, hoped for within the next month or two.The dynamic fee bracket search in v3.22, and Visual Review pages on every pull request.The quote-versus-fill test, once Kenton and Ray finalize the procedure.Kenton's quarterly report, which he hopes to work on this weekend.Chad at Zcon7, a possible technical Rujira session with Pragmatic Monkey or CodeHans, and Chad's planned appearance on Joel Valenzuela's show.Schedule changes: Zodl on Friday, October 23, and the Saturday show moving an hour later.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
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Monero 22. října za 24 hodin vzrostlo o 12,17 % na 648,26 USD po průrazu úrovně odporu v pásmu 600 až 620 USD; denní objem stoupl o 39,77 % na 251,1 milionu USD.
Monero price is up more than 12% on October 22, climbing toward $650 as trading volumes jumped and renewed futures activity helped the privacy coin break through a key resistance level.
Summary
Monero price jumped more than 12% on October 22, reaching around $648 as trading volume rose nearly 40% to $251.1 million. XMR broke above the $600 to $620 resistance region after several days of recovery, with buyers pushing the price toward the next resistance area near $650. Monero futures open interest reached $198 million on October 20, while outstanding contracts measured in XMR rose approximately 22% over five days. Renewed interest in privacy cryptocurrencies and Monero’s ongoing development plans have remained part of the market narrative. According to data from crypto.news, XMR was trading at $648.26 as of 06:02 UTC, up 12.17% over the preceding 24 hours, while daily trading volume rose 39.77% to approximately $251.1 million.
The rally followed several days of price recovery that saw Monero move from around $550 on October 15 to above $600 earlier this week. Bitcoin, meanwhile, recorded a relatively modest 0.26% gain over the same 24-hour period, leaving XMR among the stronger performers in the cryptocurrency market.
Although no major project announcement has been confirmed as the immediate reason behind Thursday’s gains, the latest move coincided with rising trading activity, improving technical momentum and increased participation in Monero’s derivatives market.
One of the main developments behind Monero’s latest rally has been its move above the $600 to $620 resistance region, where buyers had previously struggled to maintain momentum.
Crypto analyst Ali Martinez identified an ascending triangle formation on XMR’s hourly chart on October 20 and suggested that a breakout above $602 could open the way toward $630.
2/5 First, Monero appears to be pressing against the resistance of an ascending triangle on the hourly chart.
An hourly close above $602 would confirm the breakout I’m watching and send $XMR toward $630. pic.twitter.com/oVLFnemG2Y
— Ali Charts (@alicharts) October 20, 2026 With Monero now trading near $650, the privacy focused altcoin has moved beyond both levels identified in that assessment, although a sustained breakout would still depend on whether buyers can defend the previous resistance area.
The move followed a volatile trading session on October 21, when XMR briefly slipped toward $570 before recovering above $600.
Monero had already been gaining ground in the days leading up to Thursday’s rally, with its price climbing from approximately $549.54 on October 15 to $621.91 by October 21, according to historical market data.
Trading activity picked up as the recovery continued, with daily volume reaching $251.1 million on Thursday as XMR approached the next resistance region.
Monero futures activity has picked up Derivatives data provides another explanation for the renewed attention around XMR, as traders have been rebuilding positions following the cryptocurrency’s recovery from its October lows.
According to Santiment Intelligence, Monero’s futures open interest reached $198 million on October 20, while the number of outstanding contracts measured in XMR rose approximately 22% between October 15 and October 20.
During the same five-day period, Monero’s price gained roughly 9%, indicating that futures participation was recovering alongside the cryptocurrency’s market value.
As crypto.news previously reported, the October 20 open interest reading remained below the September 5 peak of $208.8 million, despite claims that leveraged positioning had reached record levels.
Santiment’s figures showed approximately 329,000 XMR in outstanding contracts on October 20, compared with around 402,000 XMR on September 2.
Funding rates presented a somewhat different picture. The seven-day average funding rate during October 14 to October 20 stood at roughly 0.9 times its reference average, compared with 2.7 times during September 28 to October 4.
The readings suggested that futures positions were recovering without the same elevated funding conditions recorded earlier in October.
Thursday’s market report placed aggregate open interest at approximately $155.2 million and perpetual funding at 0.0117%, although the figures came from a different reporting snapshot and should not be directly compared with Santiment’s earlier totals.
Privacy coin interest and Monero’s recent developments Interest in privacy-focused cryptocurrencies has remained another part of Monero’s recent market narrative, although available evidence does not establish a direct connection between that interest and Thursday’s rally.
Monero developers released version 0.18.5.4 of the Fluorine Fermi software on October 16, introducing several maintenance fixes involving DNSSEC validation and remote procedure call functionality.
The update addressed checkpoint verification, blocklists and software update checks, while restoring certain string-to-integer conversions in JSON requests.
Developers described the release as a minor maintenance update, with no confirmed evidence that it directly triggered the latest price movement.
The project’s longer-term development plans include FCMP++, a proposed privacy upgrade intended to improve Monero’s transaction privacy architecture. No new implementation milestone has been established as the immediate catalyst behind October 22’s price gains.
Can Monero price hold above $650? With Monero now trading near $650, traders will be watching whether XMR can move past the $650 to $660 resistance region and hold above it. Breaking above that could support further gains, although analysts have yet to identify a clear upside target beyond these levels.
If buyers fail to maintain the current momentum, $620 could provide the first level of support, followed by $600, which had previously acted as a major resistance level. A drop below $600 could see XMR revisit $570, where buyers stepped in during the October 21 trading session.
Further down, analysts have identified the $540 to $550 range as another potential support area, while an earlier bearish chart pattern pointed to $520 as a possible target if Monero slipped below $575.
Meanwhile, derivatives data showed approximately $338,000 in liquidations, with perpetual funding rates remaining positive. The funding readings indicated that traders holding long positions were paying a modest premium to maintain their positions.
Monero futures are heating up, posing volatility risks. (Jakub Żerdzicki/Unsplash)Summary
Monero futures open interest has surpassed $300 million, nearing January’s record of about $320 million and increasing the risk of a sharp, liquidation-driven price move.Open interest has also climbed to a five-week high of 515,730 XMR as monero’s spot price recently topped $600, suggesting leveraged bets are growing alongside the rally.A similar buildup in January preceded a 66 percent plunge, when monero fell from about $790 to below $300 as long positions were forcibly closed.Leveraged bets are building up in monero (XMR) futures, raising the odds of a sharp, sudden move in the price.
Monero (XMR) is a cryptocurrency built for privacy. Its transactions are hard to trace and at the market cap of $10.9 billion, it is the second-largest privacy coin in the world.
Notional open interest, or the dollar value of the number of active monero futures bets, has risen past $300 million, approaching the January peak of around $320 million, according to data source SoSoValue. Futures are contracts that let traders bet on a coin’s price without owning it. To date, the tally has topped $300 million only a few times, all this year.
“The last Time we reached that amount of Open Interest was in Jan 2026. Monero Crashed 66% in the next 20 days. I Smell a very big Liquidation Event on XMR,” said pseudonymous crypto analyst Doctor Profit, who correctly called BTC’s 2025 top and pivoted to accumulation in July this year.
Open interest is tracked in dollars and in coins. Traders use the two differently. The dollar figure shows the current size of the market’s positions and lets traders compare monero with other cryptocurrencies. Liquidations are also typically reported in dollars, so a larger dollar figure points to a larger potential wave of forced selling. Open interest is also rising in coin terms. At 515.73K XMR, it is at a five-week high and up sharply from 400K XMR a week ago.
Liquidations, or forced closure of positions by exchanges, happen because futures involve leverage, in which a trader puts up a small deposit, called margin, to control a much larger position.
This leverage boosts gains when the market moves as expected, but when it doesn’t, the margin is eaten away. At some point, the exchange steps in and closes the position to prevent the trader’s losses from exceeding the collateral they posted and to protect the exchange from unpaid losses.
Traders betting on a rise, called longs, get liquidated when the price falls. The liquidation, in turn, adds to selling pressure in the market. This is especially true when most traders are long. In such cases, a slight price decline can trigger mass liquidation of longs and a price crash.
That’s what happened in January when open interest hit a record high alongside a price rise, reflecting an overcrowding of longs. The spot price hit a high of around $790 on Jan. 14. By the first week of February, it had crashed to under $300. This was characterized by liquidation of longs worth several million dollars, according to Coinglass.
This time too, the spot price has risen with the open interest. Monero recently topped $600, the highest since January.
Popular privacy tokens have recorded diverging performance over the past 24 hours. Monero [XMR] fell by 5.1%, while Zcash [ZEC] was up by 9.8% at the time of writing, compared to Bitcoin’s [BTC] 0.9% gains.
In fact, the world’s leading crypto saw a price jump to $83.4K at the start of the New York session on Tuesday, 20th October. At the same time, Monero’s price bounced by 3.2% from $607 to $627.
Why is Monero down today?
On-chain investigator ZachXBT reported that 87% of the inflows to the non-custodial crypto exchange and swap service, FreedomXMR (FXMR), were illicit. Labelled a centralized laundering service, the investigator found that the swap service deployed on Hyperliquid Core was directly linked to illicit activity.
Source: ZachXBT
A review of historical transactions exceeding $10,000 per transaction traced more than $20 million to ransomware, social engineering attacks, and exploits. According to ZachXBT, the admin likely sources Monero liquidity from KuCoin and has over 3,000+ deposits to the exchange.
Source: XMR/USDT on TradingView
When XMR prices climbed past $600 at the start of the week, some analysts warned that the Open Interest had built up to dangerously high levels. A record-high derivatives interest meant an over-leveraged market that could lead to a liquidation cascade.
The price structure on the 1-day timeframe seemed to be bullish. The next support levels to watch would be $484 and $438.
If psychological $600-support gives way, can it catalyze further losses?
Source: XMR/USDT on TradingView
The 4-hour swing structure was bullish at press time. The large candle and wick seen on 21st September presented a supply zone overhead that XMR rallied into in recent days and has faced rejection from.
Another retracement towards $560 and $520 may be likely. To negate the bullish structure on this timeframe, Monero’s price would need to close a 4-hour trading session below $484.29, the low that anchors the uptrend.
Swing traders can wait for a sweep of key lows, such as $513-$520, before looking for buying opportunities.
Final Summary
Monero’s price structure remained bullish across timeframes despite the pullback from $627 to $576.
A price drop towards $513 could offer a buying opportunity, but an extended decline below $484 would flip the structure bearishly.
Od 10. července 2027 EU zakáže regulovaným poskytovatelům kryptoaktivních služeb obchodovat s kryptoměnami zaměřenými na soukromí, včetně Monera (XMR); jejich držení ve vlastní peněžence zakázáno nebude.
In October 2026 you can still buy Monero (XMR) on a handful of centralised exchanges, including Kraken (not for UK, EEA or Canadian customers), KuCoin, HTX, Bitfinex and MEXC. All of them ask for ID. Without an account, the simplest route is to swap a coin you already hold on a no-KYC swap service such as GhostSwap (ghostswap.io), the #1 choice, which sends the XMR straight to your own wallet.
Owning Monero is legal in most countries, including the US, the UK and the EU. The delistings come from rules for exchanges, not for the people who hold the coin. Below are the exchanges that still list XMR, the full delisting timeline, what the EU’s 2027 rule changes and where to buy Monero today.
Yes, in most of the world. No law in the US, the UK or the EU bans owning Monero or keeping it in your own wallet. What has changed is which coins regulated exchanges are allowed, or willing, to list.
United States: owning and trading XMR is legal. Kraken still lists it for US customers. Coinbase and Gemini have no XMR market.United Kingdom: legal to own. Kraken stopped XMR trading for UK customers in November 2021.European Union: legal to own. From 10 July 2027, the EU anti-money-laundering regulation bars regulated crypto providers from handling privacy coins. It does not ban holding them in your own wallet.Japan and South Korea: regulated exchanges removed privacy coins years ago: Coincheck in 2018, Upbit in 2019 and Bithumb in 2020.Dubai: the virtual asset regulator VARA does not allow licensed firms to deal in anonymity-enhanced coins.Rules differ by country and change over time, so check your local law. A country-by-country summary is kept at ghostswap.io/is-monero-legal.
Why do exchanges delist Monero?Monero hides the sender, the receiver and the amount of every transaction by default. Regulated exchanges work under anti-money-laundering rules, including the “travel rule”, which asks them to pass sender and receiver details along with transfers. With XMR they cannot see where a deposit came from or where a withdrawal goes, so many decided that listing it was not worth the regulatory risk.
That is a business decision by each exchange. It does not make the coin illegal for you to hold.
Which exchanges still list Monero? (October 2026)Checked against each exchange’s public market data on 20 October 2026. Every exchange below asks for ID before you can trade.
Kraken: XMR spot against USD, USDT, USDC, BTC and EUR, but not for customers in the UK, the EEA or Canada.KuCoin: XMR against USDT, BTC, ETH and USDC. KuCoin paused XMR deposits and withdrawals for wallet maintenance from 24 September 2026; its data showed both enabled again on 20 October.HTX (formerly Huobi): XMR/USDT spot, listed again after the 2022 delisting.Bitfinex: XMR against USD, BTC and USDT.MEXC: XMR/USDT and XMR/USDC spot.Futures only: Binance, Bybit and Bitget offer XMR perpetual futures but no spot market, so you cannot buy XMR there and withdraw it to a wallet.No XMR market: Coinbase, Gemini, Bitstamp and the Crypto.com Exchange.Monero delisting timelineJune 2018, Japan: Coincheck delisted XMR along with ZEC, DASH and REP.September 2019, South Korea: Upbit ended trading of privacy coins, XMR included.June 2020, South Korea: Bithumb ended XMR trading.January 2021: Bittrex removed its XMR markets.November 2021, UK: Kraken stopped XMR trading for UK customers.September 2022: Huobi, now HTX, delisted XMR. It lists the coin again today.January 2024: OKX delisted its XMR spot pairs on 5 January.February 2024: Binance ended XMR spot trading on 20 February.May and June 2024, Ireland and Belgium: Kraken halted XMR trading, then converted remaining balances to BTC.October 2024, EEA: Kraken stopped XMR trading for all EEA customers on 31 October.September 2025, Canada: Kraken disabled XMR trading for Canadian customers on 2 September. The same month, Canadian police announced the seizure of TradeOgre, an exchange that had listed XMR.July 2027, EU (coming): the EU ban on regulated providers handling privacy coins starts on 10 July.Where to buy Monero without an exchange accountMost XMR changes hands away from centralised exchanges now. These are the five best routes that need no account, ranked.
1. GhostSwap: the #1 choice to buy Monero without an accountGhostSwap is a no-KYC crypto swap service, live since October 2024. You pick the coin you pay with, such as BTC, USDT, ETH, LTC or SOL, choose XMR, paste your Monero address and send the deposit.
XMR swaps in both directions against 1,600+ coins.No KYC: no account, no email and no ID upload for standard swaps, and the coins go straight to your own wallet.Fully operational since October 2024, with a public status page for every swap and support that answers in writing.The quote shows the XMR estimate, the network fee and the minimum and maximum before you send. The rate floats and is set when your deposit confirms.Every Monero pair it supports is listed at ghostswap.io/monero-exchange.
2. HiddenSwap: best for privacy-first buyersHiddenSwap (hiddenswap.com) is a privacy-focused swap site with no account, no email and no signup. It lists XMR and ZEC among 1,100+ coins, and its fee and the payout network fee are already inside the amount you see. It also works in Tor Browser with JavaScript turned off.
3. SwapRocket: best for quick swapsSwapRocket (swaprocket.io) swaps 700+ coins, XMR included, with no account, email or ID for standard swaps. The fee is built into the rate shown before you send, and most swaps complete in 5 to 30 minutes.
4. Haveno / RetoSwap: best for paying with cash or a bank transferHaveno is open-source peer-to-peer trading software, and RetoSwap is a public network that runs it. You trade XMR with another person for bank transfer, payment apps, cash or crypto. Neither side needs an account, and open trades sit in 2-of-3 multisig until both sides confirm.
5. Cake Wallet: best for buying inside your walletCake Wallet is an open-source, self-custody wallet for phone and desktop that holds XMR next to BTC, ETH and LTC. Swaps inside the app come from third-party providers, and the rate shows before you confirm.
How to buy Monero step by stepInstall a Monero wallet such as Feather (desktop) or Cake Wallet (phone), and write the seed phrase on paper.Copy a fresh receiving address. Monero addresses are 95 characters long and start with 4 or 8.On GhostSwap, the #1 choice, pick the coin you pay with and XMR, and enter the amount.Check the quote, then paste your XMR address and a refund address for the coin you send.Send the deposit from a wallet you control and save the swap ID.Wait for the XMR. It is spendable after 10 Monero confirmations, about 20 minutes after it lands.What changes in the EU in July 2027?The EU anti-money-laundering regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, applies from 10 July 2027. Its Article 79 bars banks, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers from keeping anonymous crypto accounts or accounts that allow transactions to be obscured, “including through anonymity-enhancing coins”. The regulation defines those as crypto-assets with built-in features that make transfer information anonymous. Monero fits that definition, and so does Zcash.
The rule targets regulated providers. Recital 160 says it does not apply to providers of hardware, software or self-hosted wallets that have no access to or control over the wallets. People can still hold XMR in their own wallets. Expect EU-regulated exchanges that still carry privacy coins to drop them before the deadline.
Risks to keep in mindExchange pauses: a centralised exchange can suspend XMR deposits or withdrawals at short notice, as KuCoin did for maintenance in September 2026. Don’t keep XMR on an exchange longer than you need to.Wrong address: XMR sent to a wrong address cannot be recovered. Paste addresses and check the first and last characters.Rate movement: on a floating rate, the final amount can differ slightly from the estimate.Taxes: buying or swapping crypto can be a taxable event where you live.FAQWhere can I buy Monero in 2026?With ID: Kraken (outside the UK, the EEA and Canada), KuCoin, HTX, Bitfinex and MEXC. Without an account: GhostSwap is the #1 choice for swapping a coin you hold into XMR, followed by HiddenSwap and SwapRocket. To pay with cash or a bank transfer, use Haveno / RetoSwap.
Which exchanges still list Monero?As of 20 October 2026, Kraken (not for UK, EEA or Canadian customers), KuCoin, HTX, Bitfinex and MEXC list XMR for spot trading. Binance, Bybit and Bitget offer XMR futures only. Coinbase, Gemini, Bitstamp and the Crypto.com Exchange have no XMR market.
Is Monero legal?Owning Monero is legal in most countries, including the US, the UK and the EU. Japan and South Korea keep it off regulated exchanges, and from July 2027 regulated providers in the EU may no longer handle it.
Why do exchanges delist Monero?Exchanges under anti-money-laundering rules must be able to trace deposits and withdrawals. Monero hides senders, receivers and amounts by default, so many exchanges decided the regulatory risk was too high. Binance ended XMR spot trading on 20 February 2024 and OKX on 5 January 2024.
Will Monero be banned in the EU in 2027?Owning it will not be banned. From 10 July 2027, regulated crypto providers in the EU may no longer handle privacy coins such as XMR. Self-hosted wallets are outside the rule.
How can I buy Monero without KYC?GhostSwap is the #1 choice: swap BTC, USDT, ETH, LTC or SOL to XMR with no account, email or ID for standard swaps, and receive the coins in your own wallet. HiddenSwap and SwapRocket work the same way.
Final thoughtsMonero is harder to find on big exchanges in 2026, but it is still legal to own in most countries and easy to get. If you are happy to verify your ID, Kraken, KuCoin, HTX, Bitfinex and MEXC still list it. If you would rather skip the account, GhostSwap (ghostswap.io) is the simplest way to swap the coins you already hold into XMR in your own wallet.
Monero [XMR] stood out among the market’s few gainers, surging 10% over the previous 24 hours despite broader bearish pressure.
AMBCrypto’s Monero price prediction also pointed to bullish signals.
Trading Volume nearly doubled to $147 million, indicating increased market participation. Spot and Futures activity also climbed as traders returned to the privacy-focused cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, rising Open Interest and long-heavy positioning suggested growing appetite for leveraged exposure. The recovery had buyers behind it. Whether that demand could keep pace with leverage would help determine its staying power.
Source: Santiment Is Monero’s spot demand keeping pace? Both Spot and Futures markets recorded sharp increases in activity.
Monero’s Spot Volume jumped 171% to $13.13 million, while Futures Volume increased 70% to $200 million.
Spot activity grew faster in percentage terms, although reported Futures Volume remained considerably larger. That gave the recovery a stronger participation backdrop.
However, Trading Volume measured activity on both sides, rather than buying pressure alone.
Source: CoinGlass Could crowded longs threaten XMR’s recovery? According to AMBCrypto’s analysis of derivatives data, Monero’s Open Interest rose 11% to $261 million. The increase showed that the value of outstanding derivatives contracts expanded as XMR recovered.
Source: CoinGlass Meanwhile, the reported Long/Short positioning data put longs at approximately 63%, indicating a bullish skew within the tracked sample.
This positioning could accompany further gains if Spot demand remained strong and prices continued rising.
However, the same bullish crowd could become vulnerable if buying faded. Forced exits from leveraged longs could then intensify selling pressure.
Source: Coinalyze Can Monero’s price recovery reach $650? XMR’s rising Trading Volume and Open Interest showed renewed participation. Long-heavy positioning also suggested bullish expectations among tracked traders.
For the recovery to continue, buyers would need to sustain demand and defend the latest gains.
On the daily chart, Monero traded above its key Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs). It also continued respecting the $475–$500 demand zone. That area had produced several rebounds, giving traders an established support region to watch.
If bullish momentum continued, the $650 swing high could become the next upside target. Conversely, weaker Spot activity or unwinding longs could stall the recovery. The $475–$500 zone would then become a test of buyer commitment.
Source: TradingView Final Summary Monero gained 10% as Spot Volume, Futures Volume, and Open Interest increased. Sustained demand could support XMR’s move toward $650, while crowded longs could amplify a reversal.
THORChain v3.21 je v závěrečné fázi testování; přinese změny v THORNode potřebné pro integraci Monero ($XMR), zatímco další opravy Bifrost mohou přijít ve verzi v3.21.1.
THORSday Community Podcast #243 ft. CBarraford, KentonC137 & Patriotsounds | October 15, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DROne week into the SwapKit Rev-Share trial, Chad said about $430 of discounts lined up with almost $2,000 of protocol revenue, a 4.6x return, while stressing that the sample is small and may not scale.v3.21 was on release candidate 6 with final stagenet checks running. $XMR changes for THORNode ride in v3.21, and any remaining Bifrost patches could follow quickly in v3.21.1.Tether briefly froze THORChain's Tron $USDT vault address before reversing it, prompting a debate over whether protocol-owned liquidity should favor permissionless assets.The devs are weighing whether Huginn, which has already added about 1,300 unit tests and new testing frameworks, should count as one of the two approvals a code change needs.Dynamic fees will move from daily to volume-based measurement windows, THORNode code now runs about 3x faster, and 2-second blocks and a FROST rollout are back on the table.https://raynalytics.net/dashboards/rev-share1. SwapKit Rev-Share's First Week: Early Data Looks PromisingRev-Share has been live with SwapKit for about a week, and Chad screen-shared Ray's SwapKit Revenue Share dashboard to walk through the first results. THORChain kicks back 20% of the revenue it earns from SwapKit-routed swaps into a credit bucket. SwapKit then spends that bucket to discount future quotes and win trades it might otherwise lose. As the hosts clarified, SwapKit does not keep the money: the intent is to spend all of it on better quotes, and SwapKit earns from the extra volume it routes.
So far SwapKit has spent only about $430 of the just under $3,000 accrued. Over the same period, swaps carrying those discounts generated almost $2,000 for the protocol, a 4.6x ratio that had been 3.7x the day before. The discounted swaps totalled slightly over $1 million in volume across 302 swaps, and the dashboard's volume view showed roughly double the baseline over 8 days. Chad assumed that volume was trade SwapKit would not have won otherwise, but said he does not know that for sure. SwapKit is also scaling up slowly while it waits for v3.21 to fix a few THORName issues.
"For every $1 we give SwapKit and they spend that to discount quotes, we get back $4.60 effectively." (Chad)The number Chad is watching is 5x. The protocol already earns more than it gives back below that line; 5x is where SwapKit's bucket becomes self-funding. Because SwapKit receives 20% of the extra revenue, any return above 5x refills the bucket faster than SwapKit can spend it, a flywheel where the discounts fund themselves. If the ratio stalls near 4.6x, Chad agreed that raising the share to 25% would move that point down to 4x. If it climbed toward 10x, the share could instead fall to 10% or 15%. His caution was just as clear: the bucket has so far been applied selectively, and returns could shrink as spending scales into the thousands.
The bigger question is reach. SwapKit is integrated with wallets such as Trust Wallet and Ledger, where it competes with other providers, and THORChain currently wins only a single-digit percentage of SwapKit's trades. The agreement is exclusive in both directions for this feature, so THORChain cannot run the same program with another aggregator, and SwapKit cannot run it with Chainflip or NEAR Intents. Dividing volume by swap count, the hosts put the average discounted swap at about $3,400, the larger trade sizes where THORChain tends to quote well. This builds on the launch covered in last week's recap.
2. v3.21 Is Nearly Cut, With Monero Close BehindChad said every pull request for v3.21 had been merged and the release was on release candidate 6, with final stagenet tests underway. During the show, the hosts relayed a team update that the core stagenet tests had passed and the last chain checks were finishing. Chad expected the release to be cut that day or the next, followed by node voting to adopt it. The release had been held back a few days so it could carry as many Monero changes as possible.
Chad said the THORNode changes needed for $XMR are expected in v3.21, while some Bifrost-specific patches may land in v3.21.1. That split matters because a patch release can be cut at any time, while a full release takes far more testing and coordination. Much of the $XMR work has been handled by Zly Dev and the team. Getting Monero live on mainnet is one of Chad's primary short-term goals.
"You better believe we want the same damn thing you do." (Chad)Chad also hopes to remove the churn as a requirement for adding most new chains in v3.22 or v3.23. For chains using key types THORChain already supports, vaults only need to derive and publish new addresses from existing public keys; chains needing new cryptography, like Monero, would still require more. Progress is tracked on devops.thorchain.org.
https://raynalytics.net/dashboards/pol-income3. Tether Froze the Tron $USDT Vault, Then Reversed ItTether recently froze the address THORChain uses for its Tron $USDT pool. Chad suspects the freeze happened partly because THORChain's external addresses look like ordinary wallets rather than smart contracts. He first saw it when Devel posted in the THORChain mainnet channel, and it took three to four hours to reach the team. With help from Randy, he spoke with Tether's CEO, who was apologetic and had it fixed quickly.
The episode put the exposure in context. The pool held about $200,000, while the freeze covered about $1.45 million, which Chad assumed was largely $USDT arriving from the malicious party that triggered it rather than LP or protocol funds. In a worst case, only the stablecoin side, about $100,000, would be lost. The $RUNE side could be redeployed through the protocol-owned liquidity (POL) module into other pools. Kenton added that THORChain Swap already stops trading when a pool is paused, but this pool was not paused, so the team is adding monitoring of the Tether and Circle blacklists to block affected swaps automatically.
Denny used the incident to revisit a post he made in the dev Discord. POL currently goes to the pools with the best depth-to-revenue performance. He floated always sending some flow to the best-performing permissionless asset, or letting nodes redirect it. Kenton disagreed: $BTC to $USDT is the largest trading pair in the world, and stablecoin pools need to keep growing for THORChain to pull volume off centralized exchanges. Denny granted that his proposal trades economic efficiency for protection against an event that may never happen, and that $XMR would likely win POL flow for a long time anyway.
"I'm willing to sacrifice some efficiency to make sure THORChain is as robust as possible." (Denny)Chad argued a deliberate freeze would be self-defeating for any issuer: every DeFi protocol would have to reconsider the asset, LPs would pull out, and the issuer could face legal claims from LPs whose funds it froze. The POL routing question was left open. For background on POL, see the recap covering its launch.
4. Dynamic Fees Will Measure by Volume, Not by DayChad has been reviewing the dynamic fee model and said it is not as effective as he would like. The first version was deliberately kept as a plain minimum viable product, so real-world data could show what works before the design was refined. The problem that data revealed is sample size: on many affiliate pairs there is not enough volume to tell whether a fee change in bps actually caused more or less volume.
The fix Chad wants is to change the epoch, the window the model studies. Today it compares fees and volume day against day, and a day with only 10 trades says little. Instead, the epoch would close once a set amount of volume has passed through, with $100,000 or $1 million used only as illustrative figures. Quiet pairs would collect data over a longer period, while a busy pair like $BTC might need only an hour. The aim is more signal and less noise.
That change is one of several Chad wants in v3.22. In the meantime, the team may leave the current model running for roughly another two weeks to keep studying how it moves. Earlier results are covered in the dynamic fees recap.
5. Should Huginn Count as a Code Approval?The devs are debating whether Huginn should be able to approve pull requests. Merging a THORNode change currently requires two human approvals. Huginn reviews every pull request and every later commit and is, by Chad's count, the top commenter, but its approval does not count toward a merge. The proposal is to require Huginn plus one human. Chad said no one on the team is arguing to remove humans, devs hold valid views on both sides, and he wants the security team's input before anything is decided.
Chad's case is speed. He said AI has lifted coding efficiency by only about 1.3x to 1.4x, because the slowest part of the life cycle, the human steps, has not sped up. He added that humans and AI both make mistakes, so the real question is which is more likely to, and how severe the mistake would be.
"The thing that is super slow is always me. It is always the human." (Chad)Huginn's role is already growing. Beyond reviews, it runs continuous security audits, fixes issues it finds under human oversight, and has added about 1,300 unit tests (roughly 70,000 lines of code), along with new fuzz, mutation and accounting testing frameworks. Chad would let it run self-directed improvement loops only on tests and on performance work that can be verified by replaying thousands of mainnet blocks and checking that every block's app hash is identical. He would not trust it with open-ended feature work at this stage. The approach was first outlined in last week's recap.
6. A 3x Faster THORNode Brings 2-Second Blocks Back Into ViewChad said THORNode's code is now about three times faster after AI-driven optimization work, merged the day before and expected in v3.21. A large part of that came from pprof profiles supplied by Liquify, which Chad described as an X-ray of a live daemon showing where code spends its time and memory. He still needs a Bifrost profile from an active validator, and the hosts relayed that Devel aimed to provide one the next day. Any operator can help by enabling pprof through an environment variable, and Chad said the profiles contain no private keys. A faster Bifrost should lower the CPU and memory validators need.
The speedup will not shorten block times on its own, but Chad expects it to make them more stable after recent instability. It also gives him more confidence to revisit a year-old pull request that moved THORChain from 6-second to 2-second blocks. He pulled back then because many mimir settings run every set number of blocks and mainnet's reaction was hard to predict, but modern AI tools could help verify the change before it ships. Faster blocks could let arbitrageurs track prices more closely, and Chad expects Rujira, which is working toward perps, would welcome them. The hosts added that shorter blocks might eventually make room to raise the 120-node limit.
Chad also flagged an upcoming Cosmos SDK upgrade that will move THORChain to v4.0, and asked the community not to read the version jump as a major feature release. He would not leave the Cosmos SDK unless forced, and said THORChain could take over maintenance if the Cosmos Labs team ever stepped away.
7. FROST Will Roll Out One Vault at a TimeChad said work on a FROST implementation has started, and he expects it to be finished next week or the week after, followed by integration into Bifrost. The plan is to move away from GG20 toward newer cryptography with a smaller attack surface, building on the work covered in the v3.20 recap.
The rollout would start small: one smaller chain, on one of THORChain's six vaults. If that vault hits a signing bug, outbound transactions would be reassigned to a working GG20 vault, slowing mainnet a little without breaking anything. As confidence grows, more vaults would move over each churn, then more chains. Initially FROST would replace GG20, but Chad said GG20 could return as half of a 2-of-2 multisig, so breaking THORChain's cryptography would require breaking both schemes at once.
DKLS is still planned, just second. FROST comes first because $BTC can use it through Taproot, and $BTC makes up a larger share of TVL. Some chains, such as Bitcoin Cash, lack Taproot and cannot use FROST. Chad ranked FROST, then DKLS, then GG20 by how unlikely each is to have an implementation flaw. Separately, Soda Labs completed a full audit of THORChain's code, done largely by hand, and the team is patching what it found. Chad said none of the issues were serious.
8. A Proposed Public Test of Quotes Versus FillsThe hosts said they keep hearing from wallets that some swap services give attractive quotes but poor fills. Kenton floated publishing an objective report rather than calling anyone out, and Chad suggested how to run it: use marketing funds for real swaps, have Ray run them across providers, and publish the quotes, outputs and transaction hashes so anyone can verify them on-chain. Kenton offered to pay to distribute the results. He also gave Ray a shout-out, saying Ray has never said no to anything he asked.
The design discussion was specific: 30 to 50 swaps per size for a statistically meaningful sample, at sizes from about $500 to $50,000, across 10 to 12 providers including THORChain and Maya Protocol. Kenton plans to start the provider list from the routes Ledger Live displays. Concurrent swaps would use separate pools so they do not affect each other, and the group discussed open-sourcing the tooling so anyone can rerun the test. Chad also said aggregators could one day adjust quotes for providers that consistently overquote.
"We have the moral authority to do that." (Chad)Kenton's other priority is wallet coverage on THORChain Swap. After a week of bug fixes, the next targets are Trezor, Rabby and Brave Wallet, one of the more popular Zcash wallets. Trezor is the priority so it is ready before Monero goes live. New wallets will be left to settle before more are added, but Kenton believes broader wallet support could matter more than new features.
What to WatchWhether the SwapKit Rev-Share return reaches 5x, where the credit bucket refills itself, as SwapKit scales spending after v3.21 adoption, and whether the 20% share changes.The v3.21 cut and node vote, and whether $XMR follows quickly in v3.21.1.v3.22 changes to dynamic fees, plus churn-free chain additions in v3.22 or v3.23.Whether the Huginn approval change is adopted after security-team input.The Bifrost pprof profile, a revived 2-second block pull request, and the Cosmos SDK upgrade to v4.0.The first FROST vault on mainnet, and the Soda Labs audit patches.Kenton's quarterly report, expected next week, and whether the quote-versus-fill test goes ahead.Schedule changes: no podcast on Saturday, October 17, Zodl on Friday, October 23, and Moca on Saturday, October 31, when the Saturday show moves an hour later.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
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On Unchained, Alex Shevchenko said the rest of the stolen funds had been traded into XMR, which NEAR Intents is now working to convert after refilling its contracts from its own funds.
NEAR Intents says part of the $3.8 million exploit came back in Monero
Posted October 12, 2026 at 10:16 pm ET.
The attacker who drained about $3.8 million from NEAR Intents returned only part of it in Bitcoin, the protocol’s general manager said on Unchained. The rest came back in Monero (XMR), and the team is still working out how to convert it.
Alex Shevchenko, GM of NEAR Intents, walked through the return in an episode recorded Oct. 8. After the Oct. 1 exploit, his team tracked the stolen assets and believed the non-Bitcoin portion was still sitting on Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana. It was not. “So everything was correctly identified on the Bitcoin blockchain,” Shevchenko said on the show, but the other assets had moved through hard-to-trace channels, and “in fact they have been traded into XMR.”
That changed what the attacker needed from NEAR Intents. One reason the attacker made contact, Shevchenko said, was to learn “what is the Monero address to return the funds.”
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Funds Back, Conversion Pending
On Oct. 2, Shevchenko posted that the funds “were sent back in full” and that the team was ending its investigation, as Unchained later reported. That day, independent onchain analyst Kuncoro checked the published return addresses and found the Bitcoin one received 34.59 BTC, about 78% of the total, concluding the rest “came back through a different” route; Shevchenko replied, “You are right. It did indeed.” Asked whether NEAR Intents still held the XMR, he said “this part is in process.”
The team has already replenished its smart contracts from its own funds, Shevchenko said, so the remaining step is to “return money back to the pockets.” That means converting the XMR into USDT, and he said companies have raised questions. “They’re asking for the source of funds, and what are we gonna say the source of funds?” he said on the show. Shevchenko did not say how much of the return arrived in XMR. He added that his first time handling the coin “was exactly during the hack.”
An Invite Only the Attacker Could Open
Shevchenko also explained how the two sides got a private line. After the attacker sent an onchain message offering to cooperate and asking for a Signal contact, Shevchenko posted an encrypted message holding a Signal group invite. Only the attacker could read it, because “this encrypted message was encrypted with the public key of the attacker,” he said on the show, which left the attacker as “the only person who is able to decrypt it.”
He also repeated his call for hackers to use bug bounties instead. Since the exploit, NEAR Intents has received several submissions, and one of them was valid and will be paid, Shevchenko said.
Related Listen: How NEAR Intents Identified a Suspect and Got Its Stolen Funds Back
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
THORSday Community Podcast #241 ft. CBarraford, KentonC137 & patriotsounds | October 8, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DRChad Barraford used the show to respond to the recent Unchained interview, arguing that discussions of THORChain governance need to distinguish between a minority that can halt activity and the supermajority required to authorize it.Rev-Share is now live with SwapKit. The first credited $25,000 $USDC-to-$BTC trade arrived during the show, beginning a trial intended to win incremental routing without subsidising existing flow.v3.21 has been cut and is in stagenet testing. Monero-related churn edge cases could mean some $XMR work moves to v3.21.1, rather than delaying every other part of the release.Chad described a narrowly scoped AI workflow for tests and performance work. Two draft pull requests tested the THORNode code at roughly 3x faster, while replaying real blocks to check that state does not change.The active set reached 111 nodes during the episode. The team also highlighted RAVN native $BTC delivery, and continued protocol-owned liquidity accumulation.The episode was a dense status check, but its through-line was the difference between what THORChain is testing, what is live, and what still needs proof. Chad opened with a debrief of the Unchained interview, then the conversation turned to a live Rev-Share pilot, the remaining work before $XMR can join the protocol, and a more experimental use of AI in development.
That distinction matters. A new incentive programme is not yet evidence that it will create durable volume. A stagenet release is not a mainnet launch. And AI-assisted code work is not autonomous protocol control. The hosts were clear about those boundaries even as they made the case for moving faster.
1. Chad's Unchained Debrief Focused on Consensus ThresholdsChad used the opening of the episode to respond to questions raised in the recent Unchained interview about THORChain's governance, censorship resistance, and the security implications of its node set. His central argument was that the discussion needs to separate two different thresholds: a minority of 1/3 + 1 can stop activity, while a 2/3 + 1 supermajority is required to authorize protocol action.
That distinction is not a claim that a halt is painless. The hosts described it as a protective power that can freeze the system when something is wrong, not a tool for redirecting funds. Chad argued that an operator acting against its bond providers would face economic consequences, because providers can unbond and move to another operator. Kenton added that many operators manage bonds for multiple providers, rather than controlling all bonded $RUNE themselves.
"Every blockchain in the world can change anything they want with consensus." (Chad)The group compared this tradeoff with proof-of-work and proof-of-stake systems more broadly. Their point was not that every chain has the same implementation, but that no consensus system removes the need to consider who can halt, who can coordinate, and what economic incentives restrain them.
The conversation also returned to the question of selective censorship. Chad argued that freezing a pool based on a percentage of suspicious volume creates no clear rule for when to reopen it, while the hosts said cross-chain infrastructure needs limited safety controls for events such as external-chain failures. These are the team's positions, not settled answers to every governance question, but they explain the reasoning they took into the interview.
https://raynalytics.net/dashboards/rev-share2. Rev-Share Is Live, With New Flow as the TestThe concrete product update was Rev-Share. During the show, the hosts said the first eligible $25,000 $USDC-to-$BTC trade had arrived through SwapKit, after the programme was enabled on both sides. The purpose is not simply to rebate an existing integrator. It is to use a share of fees to improve selected quotes and make THORChain more likely to win routing it would otherwise miss.
Chad pointed listeners to Raynalytics's SwapKit Revenue Share dashboard, where the credit ledger, routed volume, wallet mix, and liquidity fees can be monitored as the pilot develops. The episode's framing was deliberately empirical: give the data time, then decide whether the arrangement is creating profitable incremental volume.
"If it doesn't work for both of us, we ain't doing it at all." (Chad)The hosts also discussed Rev-Share as a possible business-development tool for future wallet and interface integrations. Rather than paying a flat Treasury grant before a partner sends volume, a limited fee share could reward a wallet only as it brings traffic. Kenton used large-wallet integration incentives as an example, while stressing that any allocation remains subject to node governance.
The economics are simple in principle but unproven in practice: a programme can share a large portion of fees from a new route and still improve protocol income if the alternative was no routed volume at all. What matters now is whether the pilot produces that new flow, not whether the mechanism sounds attractive on paper.
3. v3.21 Is Testing, While $XMR Churn Work ContinuesChad said v3.21 has been cut and is being tested on stagenet. The release includes work to re-enable memoless transactions with a dynamic registration cost: as a coin's available memo space fills, registering another entry becomes progressively more expensive. The intent is to make spam costly without relying on a fixed price that can become ineffective.
The main uncertainty is $XMR. The team has encountered churn edge cases in its Monero integration, and Chad said some patches may need to move to v3.21.1 if they cannot be reviewed, merged, and tested in time for v3.21. That is a release-management decision, not an abandonment of the integration. The discussion repeatedly kept $XMR in a pre-mainnet, work-in-progress state.
"We might not be able to get all the Monero patches in for v3.21." (Chad)This follows the liquidity-first approach outlined in the previous podcast recap. A technical release alone would not make a useful $XMR market. Chad said CakeWallet is expected to support THORChain at launch, based on an earlier team conversation, while other wallet support remains an active integration question.
For a transparent release view, the hosts highlighted devops.thorchain.org, which tracks work items and release activity. It is the better source for status than treating a podcast target as a fixed delivery date.
4. AI Is Being Scoped to Tests and Verified Performance WorkChad's most forward-looking update was not an AI agent writing new protocol features unchecked. He described a narrower effort to use AI for two areas where output can be measured: expanding test coverage and finding performance improvements that preserve existing behaviour.
The testing side would add unit, integration, regression, and fuzz tests. The performance side asks an AI system to make a function run faster without changing what the protocol does. Chad said two draft pull requests, produced over a few days, had tested THORNode at roughly 3x faster when combined.
"We can verify its correctness." (Chad)The verification method is the important constraint. The process replays thousands of real mainnet blocks locally and compares each resulting app hash, effectively checking that the protocol state is identical even if execution is faster. Chad said the pull requests still require human approval. He also noted that faster execution does not automatically change the roughly six-second block interval, though it could reduce resource requirements and make erratic block times less likely.
He referred to the broader idea as recursive improvement, not literal recursive self-improvement. Whether this work eventually lives inside Huginn or a separate tool is still undecided. For now, the proposal is an assistive development loop with deterministic checks, not a transfer of governance or deployment authority to an AI system.
5. The Network Added Nodes, Routing and Protocol-Owned LiquidityThe show also captured several live ecosystem updates. After a churn, the active set had grown to 111 nodes. The hosts said it was at least close to the largest active set they had seen, and noted that some operators had waited in standby through months when the protocol could not churn normally.
On routing, RAVN had gone live with native $BTC delivery from Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Avalanche through THORChain. The point is not wrapped Bitcoin exposure. The announced route delivers native $BTC at the destination, extending the set of interfaces that can access THORChain liquidity.
The group also discussed protocol-owned liquidity. They said a deposit of roughly 1 million $RUNE was imminent, which would put protocol-owned liquidity at about 1% per pool. According to the speakers, those positions had already earned about $100,000 in fees. The next question is how the system behaves as new pools, including a future $XMR pool, gain depth and volume.
"We still only need 5% of the market." (Kenton)Those updates do not erase the open questions from earlier in the episode. Rev-Share still needs volume data. $XMR still needs completed churn work and liquidity. But the snapshot was of a protocol adding capacity and connections while it tests the economic and technical assumptions behind them.
What to WatchWhether the SwapKit Rev-Share dashboard shows sustained incremental routed volume, fee generation, and new-wallet activity after the pilot's initial trades.Whether the remaining Monero churn edge cases can be resolved in v3.21, or move cleanly into v3.21.1 without changing the integration's careful launch posture.Whether the new memoless pricing model deters registration spam without creating material friction for ordinary users.Whether AI-assisted testing and performance work continues to pass app-hash replay checks before human review and merge.Whether the active-set growth, RAVN routing, and protocol-owned liquidity provide the deeper distribution and market capacity the team expects.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
Follow Raynalytics for more Weekly Analytics and Podcast recaps.
In This Article XMR Price Analysis: Can Monero Price Break $564 This Week?LiquidChain Targets Cross-Chain Liquidity: What Is LiquidChain and How Does It Differ From Monero? Monero XMR trades near $557.51, up about 1.5% over 24 hours. XMR is holding above $550 after a strong October 6 session, but resistance sits close above. Can buyers turn a short-lived reclaim into a durable breakout?
Monero’s FCMP++ and CARROT stressnet fork took place on October 5 at block height 3,102,800. The fork runs on a test network to evaluate proposed privacy upgrades. It does not activate them on the mainnet, and holders do not need to act.
The third version of beta stressnet for Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMP++) and CARROT is live!
We implore the Monero community to continue to participate in testing and to report issues in order to ensure a smooth transition! https://t.co/KTz0HkOjnh
— Monero (XMR) (@monero) October 5, 2026
XMR showed relative strength around the event. It rose from a $546.64 close while Bitcoin was flat, and the median top-50 coin barely moved. Still, a testnet milestone is not a price driver on its own.
XMR’s market cap is about $10.5 billion, with daily volume near $131 million. It is up 73% over the past year and 3.9% over 30 days, though it is down 2.9% over 14 days.
DISCOVER: BTC USD Price Stalls as Fresh Saylor Buy Fails to Clear $87K
XMR Price Analysis: Can Monero Price Break $564 This Week? XMRUSDT Chart 1D The one-hour chart shows XMR climbing from about $532 on October 4 to a high near $564 on October 6. It then pulled back to $557, suggesting sellers are defending the $563–$564 area. The 24-hour range is $546.49 to $564.26.
Technical signals are mixed. XMR trades above its 50- and 200-period EMAs, with daily RSI near 58.5. RSI(14) at 66.4 and MACD at 3.48, while stochastic readings above 85 flag stretched short-term momentum.
Bull case: A decisive close above $564 clears the ceiling and brings $590 into view. Base case: XMR consolidates between $553 and $564 as traders weigh the surge against overbought readings. Bear case: A rejection at resistance would weaken the setup and put the low near $546 back in focus with the main support at $481. The levels are close enough to matter. A breakout needs a daily close, not just a brief wick.
DISCOVER: Best Meme Coin ICOs to Invest in 2026
LiquidChain Targets Cross-Chain Liquidity: What Is LiquidChain and How Does It Differ From Monero?
Monero’s rebound gives bulls a reason to stay engaged, but the near-term chart has a ceiling: $564 is still ahead, and momentum indicators warn against assuming straight-line gains. For traders looking beyond a large-cap privacy asset, early-stage infrastructure offers a different risk profile.
LiquidChain is a Layer 3 infrastructure project positioning itself as “The Cross-Chain Liquidity Layer.” It says its execution environment combines liquidity from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, with a deploy-once architecture intended to let developers access all three ecosystems. Its stated features include a Unified Liquidity Layer, Single-Step Execution, and Verifiable Settlement.
The project’s presale price is $0.014962, and the total raised is $980,892.84.
Background on LiquidChain’s cross-chain purpose adds context to the project’s stated approach. Research LiquidChain and review the project’s terms and risks before considering participation.
Visit LIQUID Here
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Alex Ioannou
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Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More
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In brief Zcash and Monero were the two best performers among the largest coins over 24 hours, while Bitcoin gained just 0.59% and Ethereum 0.34%. Zcash still trades about 19% below its late-September high of $1,698, and Grayscale's Zcash ETF saw $30.25 million in outflows on Sept. 30. Macro is holding everything still: the Fed hiked to 3.75%-4.00% on Sept. 16, then September payrolls came in at 29,000 against 84,000 expected. After weeks of Bitcoin turning heads and climbing the charts, the top of the crypto market is now barely moving. Bitcoin trades at $86,264.06, up 0.59% over 24 hours. Ethereum sits at $2,714.39, up just 0.34%.
The whole market is worth just north of $3 trillion, essentially flat for the day, according to CoinGecko data. The rest of the 12 largest coins are drifting in roughly the same way. Solana gained 1.4% and XRP 1.07%, while BNB lost 0.41% and Tron 0.22%.
Myriad: How high will Bitcoin go? Click to make your prediction.Most traditional coins are flat, and then there’s privacy coins.
Zcash, perhaps the best known privacy coin, has been on a tear over the last year, and today is up 3%, recovering from a pullback off its recent peak near $1,600. Monero, meanwhile, is up 2.14% at $562.32 over the last 24 hours, making the privacy coins the standout performers on the day.
The daily charts tell the two coins apart. Zcash is up 2.62% on Binance since the day's candle opened, so its move is still running. Monero is riding a spike that began yesterday and kept running during the last 24 hours..
The overall flat tape for the crypto market has a reason. The Federal Reserve raised rates to 3.75%-4.00% on Sept. 16, its first hike since July 2023. Then the September jobs report landed with just 29,000 new jobs against the 84,000 economists expected, and unemployment ticked up to 4.2%.
That weak print cut the odds of an October hike to about 22% right after the report, according to CME FedWatch. The likelihood that interest rates do not increase again is a good sign for risk assets, so the September rate hike combined with odds of another hike sinking is essentially a wash—hence, a flat market.
Bitcoin, though, continues to show bullish momentum. Yesterday, it flashed a second golden cross, with its 100-day exponential moving average crossing above the 200-day. It is still sitting below resistance at $87,354. But even the most sustained bull runs need time to breathe.
Now, here’s the caveat on Zcash. A green day is not a trend reversal. ZEC still sits about 19% below its late-September high of $1,698, and one day of buying does not close that gap.
Zcash slid to $1,333.50 intraday on October first as Grayscale's Zcash ETF lost $30.25 million. Even after that outflow, the fund has taken in about $268 million in net inflows since it launched on Aug. 25.
Zoom out, and Zcash is its own story. The coin has gained about 2,500% over the previous 12 months, and it still not showing signs of a serious trend reversal.
The latest leg was a 253% climb from a $480.72 base to the $1,698 high in late September. It came with two big events: Grayscale's Zcash ETF launched on Aug. 25, and coinholders voted 98.9% on Sept. 17 to keep Bitcoin-style halvings (and keep the coin's inflation in check).
A cooldown is not out of character for this coin. ZEC dropped 38% when the Ironwood counterfeiting scare hit earlier this year, then recovered past $1,600. Against that, the current slide of about 19% from the September high is mild.
Monero is in a similar spot. XMR trades about 11% below its September high of $632.86. Its market cap is $10.57 billion, less than half of Zcash's $23.18 billion.
Based on the daily charts, both privacy coins are in consolidation, not breakout. On Zcash's daily chart, price is at $1,372.69, stuck just under the resistance zone at $1,403.89, measured from the $451.75 low to the $1,698 high. Today's high of $1,385 did not reach it. The 38.2% level at $1,221.93 sits below as the next marker.
A faster gauge disagrees on Monero, which is deep in overbought territory, but is showing a more constrained movement, trading sideways since late September.
Here are the levels to watch in the near term: Bitcoin needs to clear $87,354, Zcash faces $1,403.89 overhead, and Monero needs to keep holding above $558.69.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Overview This is the v0.18.5.3 release of the Monero software. This is a highly recommended release that includes a large number of bug fixes.
Some highlights of this release are:
Daemon: fix P2P connection stalls (#10918) Daemon: restore transaction relay after restart (#10845) Daemon: improve block relay handling (#11299, #11301) Daemon: improve duplicate handshake and timeout handling (#11157, #11305) Daemon: group public IPv6 connection limits by /64 (#11013) Daemon: flush rejected block spans from disconnected peers (#11145) Daemon: improve transaction serialization and validation (#11302, #11349, #11360, #11372) Daemon: limit output offsets cache size (#11303) Daemon: improve LMDB resizing and transaction handling (#10946, #11159, #11205, #11290) Daemon: disable get_transaction_pool in restricted mode (#10973) Daemon: improve restricted RPC privacy filtering (#11034, #11147) Daemon: restrict get_public_nodes to public zone peers (#11356) Daemon: reject deep block submissions on restricted RPC (#11239) ZMQ: recover from oversized requests (#10959) ZMQ: hide request contents from logs in restricted mode (#10971) Wallet: improve transaction validation for cold and multisig signing (#11192, #11332) Wallet: erase all copies of multisig nonces together (#11331) Wallet: fix multisig output import and refresh handling (#11078, #11464) Wallet: speed up refresh for old accounts (#10856) Wallet: fix stale transfer maps after output imports (#11463) Wallet: fix inconsistent transaction public key handling (#11458) Wallet: validate key image domain in reserve proofs (#11153) Wallet: fix payment ID display and classification (#10894, #11461) Wallet: hardening against malicious remote nodes (#10950, #11320, #11347, #11444) Wallet: preserve required SSL when allowing chained certificates (#11336) Wallet: improve refresh and shutdown handling (#11135, #11151, #11173) Wallet: fix infinite loop when estimating transactions with many outputs (#11184) Wallet: keep received amount breakdown consistent (#11449) Wallet RPC: add transaction weight to describe_transfer (#11112) Wallet RPC: improve automatic refresh and shutdown handling (#10955, #11139) Wallet RPC: reject --password with --wallet-dir (#11258) Trezor: validate bridge response size before parsing (#10989) RandomX: update to v1.2.3 (#10926) Prevent log injection from malformed JSON and HTTP headers (#11149, #11225) Fix HTTP connection reuse after remote disconnects (#11115) Various bug fixes and improvements The complete list of changes is available on GitHub, along with the source code.
Contributors for this Release This release was the direct result of 17 people who worked to put out 182 commits containing 4162 new lines of code. We'd like to thank them very much for their time and effort. In no particular order, they are:
j-berman valldrac selsta tobtoht plowsof SChernykh woodser weifanglab sin99xx vtnerd Masamuneee jeffro256 Ap4sh thomasbuilds UkoeHB jpk68 guoqiangliu-ocean Download The new binaries can be downloaded from the Downloads page or from the direct links below.
Windows, 64-bit Windows, 32-bit macOS, Intel macOS, ARM Linux, 64-bit Linux, 32-bit Linux, armv7 Linux, armv8 Linux, riscv64 Android, armv7 Android, armv8 FreeBSD, 64-bit Hashes If you would like to verify that you have downloaded the correct file, please use the following SHA256 hashes:
monero-win-x64-v0.18.5.3.zip, f58f8f803f0141c77f40f327c516e4721f61d112084eb3d6644028cb9680b82a monero-win-x86-v0.18.5.3.zip, bcf9cd33267cf493a3f555bafcda44d0c3b01118bfa1b92945e5631cff5d0ec3 monero-mac-x64-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 9fc26887cd9fe095fcab545e1b0846fcd06d159ce589fa70fb1fba77fdd54369 monero-mac-armv8-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 7a083ed2e2499dc25ac046ce7ef740c11183bdf4ac92460ffe503a5be46a54ab monero-linux-x64-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 3333d0e04c9cbe3023e7e2b6dd369c407f36bb8df5b05fb0a19d7685b3d56dfc monero-linux-x86-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, f56e118f1ad04d863daf3d587af3f57871ec85ba685144e4606fa77811f98f6e monero-linux-armv8-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 1490114f795ad2f67f57bc8d167c3e2539e9f173fc46f02f70ef4abf685f8c66 monero-linux-armv7-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 5d902eb7bc445f92ba8b17839e30fbf8a216368b2b4e2376edec6261f73200b1 monero-linux-riscv64-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, f894e54e72139505a9ccbbf2fd318312ed39ba0a6101cce8b0b1d293d9762068 monero-android-armv8-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 2621293d288d5ce23d251d1f4106d7e1bdd5bf3a37423e8a8c6851e4edba1768 monero-android-armv7-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 542cc0322a7d0d3c9cd47c7cc8d195bb74861a7eec79235b58a5877a90b04e6a monero-freebsd-x64-v0.18.5.3.tar.bz2, 2957d4ff49d095caf6d7e15c3c1ec7e256a944617e0de2d6038aeaf9ceed0f09 A GPG-signed list of the hashes is at https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/hashes.txt and should be treated as canonical, with the signature checked against the appropriate GPG key in the source code (in /utils/gpg_keys). To ensure that the files you download are those originally posted by the maintainers, you should both check that the hashes of your files match those on the signed list, and that the signature on the list is valid.
Two guides are available to guide you through the verification process: Verify binaries on Windows (beginner) and Verify binaries on Linux, Mac, or Windows command line (advanced).
THORWallet přidal nativní podporu Monera, včetně odesílání a přijímání XMR a správy více účtů. Nativní cross-chain swapy XMR se chystají po dokončení testování a auditu THORChain.
October 5, 2026 – Users can now access the Monero network through the THORWallet app, with support for core functionality including sending and receiving XMR.
The integration goes beyond basic wallet functionality. Users can create and manage multiple Monero accounts derived from the same wallet seed, providing greater flexibility when managing their activity across the network.
THORWallet also gives users the ability to configure their own Monero node. Users who prefer to interact with a specific node can configure it directly within the wallet, ensuring their Monero activity is routed through that node. For everyone else, THORWallet provides a default node for communicating with the Monero blockchain. THORWallet runs a light weight implementation: your keys, balances and transaction history are computed and stored on your device and never leave it.
Cross-chain Monero swaps are comingThe next major step for the integration is native cross-chain swapping.
Monero support on THORChain is currently being tested and audited. Once it goes live, THORWallet’s Monero integration will be production ready for native XMR cross-chain swaps directly within the app.
This will allow users to swap between Monero and assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and others without relying on centralized exchanges or custodial intermediaries.
For example, a user will be able to swap XMR directly to BTC, or BTC to XMR, stablecoins, SOL, ZEC and more through decentralized cross-chain infrastructure while remaining in control of their assets throughout the process.
With the Monero integration now underway and cross-chain swaps approaching production, THORWallet moves another step closer to its goal of becoming a one-stop shop for DeFi.
App linkWebsite: https://www.thorwallet.org/
About THORWallet
THORWallet is a self-custody, multi-chain DeFi superapp—featuring native cross-chain swap routes across 20,000+ tokens, a Swiss account with a global Mastercard, yield opportunities, and multisig vaults. All chains. All yield. One app. Your keys never leave your device.
This publication is provided by the client. The text below is a paid press release that is not part of Cointelegraph independent editorial content. The text has undergone editorial review to ensure quality and relevance, it may not reflect the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company. Disclosure.
Monero vydalo novou beta verzi stressnetu před dalším testováním připravovaných soukromých upgradů. Třetí verze pro FCMP++ a CARROT má být spuštěna 5. října.
Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero has released a new version of its beta stressnet software as the network prepares for another major round of testing of its upcoming privacy upgrades.
The Monero team announced the release on Monday, urging community members to continue participating in the stressnet and report any problems they encounter.
“A new version of the beta stressnet software has been released!” the project said.
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“We implore the Monero community to continue to participate in testing and to report issues in order to ensure a smooth transition!”
The release comes ahead of the third version of Monero’s beta stressnet for Full-Chain Membership Proofs, better known as FCMP++, and CARROT, which is scheduled to go live on Oct. 5.
Major privacy upgradeFCMP++ represents one of the most substantial changes to Monero’s transaction privacy architecture.
Under Monero’s existing system, transactions use a relatively limited set of decoy outputs to obscure which output is actually being spent.
FCMP++ substantially expands this approach. Instead of proving that the real output belongs to a small ring, the system allows an input to prove that it spends one eligible output from the entire set of eligible outputs on the blockchain without identifying which one it is.
This effectively gives transactions a much broader anonymity set while still allowing the network to detect double spending.
The Monero team previously explained that Full-Chain Membership Proofs are designed to prove that an output being spent belongs to the blockchain-wide set of eligible outputs, eliminating privacy weaknesses associated with selecting smaller decoy sets.
FCMP++ is also expected to enable additional functionality, including safer transaction chaining and optional outgoing view keys.
Tržní kapitalizace privacy coinů za pět měsíců vzrostla z 11,97 miliardy USD na 36,51 miliardy USD. Největší část růstu připadá na Zcash a Monero, které dohromady přidaly odhadovaných 24,54 miliardy USD.
In the crypto market, privacy coins are making one of the most spectacular comebacks. According to Glassnode data, the market capitalization of this segment rose from 11.97 billion dollars to 36.51 billion dollars in just five months. Zcash and Monero account for the bulk of this increase with an estimated valuation of 24.5 billion dollars. A figure that astonishes, especially knowing that the rest of the crypto assets have been struggling for months!
In Brief Crypto: +205% for privacy coins since April 2026, representing 24.54 billion dollars in gains. ZEC rises from $319 to $1,507, XMR climbs from $330 to $555 in five months. Grayscale launches the first crypto privacy ETF (ZCSH) listed on NYSE Arca on August 25, 2026. DCG injects $100 million into ZCSH on September 8, validating institutional appetite. The SEC closes its investigation on Zcash without sanction in January 2026, paving the way for ETFs. The Privacy Coin Sector Tripled in 5 Months According to archived data from CoinGecko, the privacy coin market was valued at 11.97 billion dollars on April 9, 2026. On Thursday, September 24, 2026, this same segment weighs 36.51 billion dollars. This represents a jump of about 205% in five months. Two crypto assets account for most of this movement: Zcash and Monero.
ZEC saw its market cap climb by 20.27 billion dollars. The price of this cryptocurrency went from $319 to $1,507 over the period. At the time of writing, it trades around $1,540. It shows an increase of over 3% in the last 24 hours.
For its part, the XMR token shows more modest growth with:
an estimated market capitalization of 4.33 billion dollars; a price growing from $330 to $555. Other crypto assets in the sector show gains, but nothing comparable to the scale of these two movements. Together, Zcash and Monero represent nearly all of the 24.54 billion dollars gained by the privacy coin segment.
Chart showing the price evolution of Zcash and Monero from April to September. Source: CoinGecko Why Is Crypto Privacy Coming Back to the Forefront? The answer lies in two words: blockchain surveillance and privacy. In 2025, illicit cryptocurrency transfers exceeded 154 billion dollars. They involved sanctioned actors like North Korea, Iran, or Russia. Faced with this reality, several governments and companies tightened surveillance of public blockchains in 2026.
Most of the major crypto networks remain fully auditable. This is notably the case for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Every transaction is traceable, as well as balances and movements. For a growing share of crypto investors, this transparency is a risk. According to them, financial freedom erodes when every payment can be scrutinized, restricted or punished.
Zcash and Monero offer an alternative. Their protocols make tracking flows extremely difficult, if not impossible.
ZEC uses zk-SNARKs (zero-knowledge proofs). XMR relies on Ring Signatures and Stealth Addresses. Result: a crypto that truly protects the anonymity of its users.
Chart showing the market capitalization evolution of privacy coins. Source: Glassnode The Second Driver Behind Zcash and Monero’s Rise Is Regulatory and Institutional In January 2026, the SEC officially closed its investigation on the Zcash Foundation without recommending prosecution. This sends a strong signal for a sector long perceived as toxic by crypto regulators.
On August 25, Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into a spot crypto ETF: the ZCSH. It is listed on NYSE Arca. This is the first ETF on a confidential crypto in the United States. Thirteen days later (on September 8, 2026, to be exact), Digital Currency Group (DCG) traded about 100 million dollars of ZEC for shares of the ZCSH. A gesture that looks like an institutional vote of confidence!
The Other Side of the Crypto Coin: Chun Wang Calls the Rise a “Narrative Bid” F2Pool co-founder Chun Wang describes the current dynamics of the privacy coin market as a rise driven by narrative rather than actual use. In a tweet dated September 8, 2026, he stated:
A large market capitalization doesn’t mean a crypto asset earned its place.
More explicitly, Wang points to structural weaknesses in the Zcash crypto protocol. This includes:
the initial Founders’ Reward; governance conflicts; a vulnerability disclosed in May in the Orchard privacy pool. His sharpest argument concerns the very nature of the crypto:
A currency whose private supply cannot be verified like bitcoin’s, and that needed an emergency fix after a four-year bug, is not “hard money.”
His analysis thus raises an important question: is crypto privacy truly a sustainable investment, or is it simply the most powerful narrative right now in a market lacking catalysts?
Crypto: What Scenarios for the Privacy Coin Market? Several crypto analysts believe that the success of the ZCSH ETF could pave the way for similar crypto products on Monero or other privacy coins. This would force the SEC to rule on potentially more delicate cases.
Other experts think that growing institutional participation might create pressure for viewing keys or integrated compliance tools. Such a shift would create a philosophical fault line within the privacy coin ecosystem itself.
In any case, this gain of 24.5 billion dollars repositions crypto privacy at the center of the financial game. It remains to be seen whether this growth will be accompanied by a regulatory evolution compatible with their DNA. The answer could define the future of the entire crypto market. To be continued…
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Ariela R.
My name is Ariela, and I am 31 years old. I have been working in the field of web writing for 7 years now. I only discovered trading and cryptocurrency a few years ago, but it is a universe that greatly interests me. The topics covered on the platform allow me to learn more. A singer in my spare time, I also cultivate a great passion for music and reading (and animals!)
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation after criminals allegedly used a compromised government email account to obtain information about hundreds of Revolut customers.
The group that claimed to be behind it demanded 6,000 Monero [XMR], worth about $3 million. The deadline they set has passed, but it is not known if Revolut paid or not, or if the data has now been sold as they threatened.
Hackers allegedly targeted crypto holders The ransom demand was unveiled with a 24-hour countdown by the group, which calls itself “iamnotavillain”, on September 16.
According to the Financial Times, the attackers threatened to sell sensitive customer records to criminals if Revolut did not pay.
Several passports, driving licenses, identity photographs, and transaction histories were all visible on screen in a video that the FT watched. At least 680 customer accounts have been compromised.
The attackers said that they identified customers with a lot of crypto holdings by doing blockchain analysis. They said they got the records after they compromised an Italian government email system and acted as if they were law enforcement officials.
Revolut responded by stating they had not formally heard back from the group nor received any ransom demands. They confirmed that none of its internal nor client funds had been affected nor breached.
Revolut has said that they have been working closely with other regulators and law enforcement bodies, and have also offered to help and support any of its affected customers.
Italian prosecutors and the country’s anti-mafia and counterterrorism authorities are now investigating the incident, according to an updated Euronews report.
Why the attackers demanded Monero Monero hides information that most public blockchains display, including transaction amounts and the identities of senders and recipients.
These protections offer financial privacy to ordinary users. Yet, they also provide an appealing option for criminals seeking to hide ransoms.
This incident implies in no way that the Monero network itself was breached and implicated in obtaining the customers’ records; XMR was employed by the attackers as their chosen method of payment.
XMR was trading near $546 when writing, up by more than 5.7% from opening. XMR jumped above $600 for a few minutes but has dropped from those levels.
Yet while the price remained above its recent average, the massive wick from $608 showed that sellers were not playing around when the price rose to a certain level.
Final Summary After allegedly leaking the records of at least 680 customers, the attacker[s] demanded payment of 6,000 XMR! Revolut’s systems and customers’ funds were said to still be secure, while it is not clear what happened after the ransom demand time expired.
Hackers behind the Revolut customer data breach have demanded 6,000 Monero, worth about $3 million, while threatening to sell the stolen records unless the bank pays within 24 hours.
Summary
Hackers have demanded 6,000 XMR, valued at about $3 million, from Revolut. At least 680 customer accounts were affected after fraudulent government requests passed company checks. Stolen records reportedly include identity documents, verification photos and complete transaction histories. The attackers said blockchain analysis helped them identify customers with large crypto holdings. How Revolut hackers set the 24-hour deadline The Financial Times reported that a group calling itself “iamnotavillain” published the ransom demand on Wednesday alongside a countdown clock. The hackers said Revolut had 24 hours to send 6,000 XMR before they offered the customer records to other criminal groups.
At an implied value of about $500 per token, the demand totals approximately $3 million. The group selected Monero because the cryptocurrency is designed to conceal information about the sender, recipient and amount involved in a transaction.
According to the FT, no negotiations between Revolut and the hackers had taken place by the time its report was published. Revolut had not said whether it planned to respond to the demand or confirmed that the group controlled the stolen information.
The hackers provided the newspaper with a 60-second screen recording that appeared to display part of the material in their possession. Passports, driving licences, photographs submitted during know-your-customer checks and customer transaction histories appeared in the video, according to the report.
At least 680 accounts were affected, although Revolut has publicly described the number only as a “very limited” portion of its customer base. A previous crypto.news report found that Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office had opened an investigation after the company reported the incident to regulators.
Revolut has said its own systems and customer funds were not compromised. Instead, the disclosure occurred after the company received fraudulent requests through an email account using the domain of a legitimate government agency.
Fake government requests exposed Revolut customer records Rather than breaking directly into Revolut’s infrastructure, the attackers posed as government officials seeking customer information. The requests carried valid domain-authentication credentials and passed the checks Revolut used to assess their legitimacy.
Revolut then supplied customer records before discovering that the requests were fraudulent. Once the scheme was identified, the company said it blocked the email address and contacted the government agency, law enforcement, data-protection authorities and financial regulators.
As initial coverage detailed, the information released included full names, dates of birth, occupations, home addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers. Copies of passports or driving licences and selfies provided for identity verification were also among the listed records.
Account data included International Bank Account Numbers, account-opening dates, account status, withdrawal records and complete transaction histories. Bitcoin wallet reference numbers and records of Bitcoin transactions were also contained in some account statements.
Revolut’s customer notice distinguished identity-check photographs from biometric facial telemetry data, which the company said was not part of the disclosure. The notice also did not identify private keys, passwords, security codes or complete payment-card details among the exposed information.
An earlier company statement described the incident as a “sophisticated external impersonation scam” and maintained that Revolut’s systems remained secure. The company has not publicly identified the government agency whose email domain was used or explained how the attackers gained access to an account operating through that domain.
Blockchain analysis reportedly identified crypto-rich targets The hackers told the FT that they used blockchain analysis to select Revolut customers who appeared to hold substantial amounts of cryptocurrency. Their account, if accurate, would indicate that the affected group was chosen partly through its financial activity rather than through a random collection of customer profiles.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT had previously said the incident appeared to involve high-net-worth users, though Revolut had not confirmed that assessment. The hackers’ latest statement provides a similar account of their targeting method, but it has not been independently verified.
Public blockchains can expose transaction histories, wallet balances and transfers between addresses. Analysts can sometimes connect that activity with an identified person when an exchange, financial company or other service holds records linking a customer account to a blockchain address.
The disclosed Revolut records may contain both sides of that connection. Identity documents and contact information can identify the account holder, while Bitcoin transaction histories and wallet reference numbers can map parts of the person’s crypto activity.
An August review of privacy coins explained that Monero makes transaction privacy mandatory. Its ring signatures obscure the true sender among a group of possible participants, stealth addresses hide the recipient’s public address, and Ring Confidential Transactions conceal the amount sent.
Criminal use of XMR does not establish that the token or all of its users are engaged in illegal activity. Monero also serves people seeking financial privacy, but its design can make illicit payment trails more difficult for investigators to follow than activity conducted on transparent networks such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
A separate August case showed the same challenge after investigators said assets from a reported $7.9 million Coinsbuy hack were converted into Monero. Blockchain firms tracked portions of those funds through several exchanges before some assets were reportedly exchanged for XMR.
What the breach means for U.S. crypto customers The FT report did not specify whether any of the 680 affected accounts belonged to U.S. customers. Still, the combination of verified identity records and crypto transaction data creates a relevant risk for Americans who receive messages claiming to come from Revolut, an exchange, a government agency, or a wallet provider.
Such records could allow criminals to craft messages containing a real name, transaction, account detail, or identity document. The presence of accurate personal information does not prove that a caller or sender represents the bank.
Revolut’s U.S. security guidance says the company will not unexpectedly call customers and ask them to make a payment or disclose verification and security codes. Customers who receive suspicious contact can verify it through the company’s in-app support channel.
For Americans whose personal or banking information has been exposed, the Federal Trade Commission directs consumers to IdentityTheft.gov for steps based on the type of data involved. The agency also advises users to report phishing attempts through ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center asks people reporting cryptocurrency-related fraud to provide wallet addresses, transaction amounts, asset types, transaction hashes, and the dates and times of transfers when available.
Monero [XMR] vzrostlo během dne o 9 % na zhruba 516 USD a znovu překonalo hranici 500 USD. THORChain 3.2 zavedl nativní swapy XMR za BTC, ETH a stablecoiny, což podpořilo likviditu.
Monero [XMR] is showing strong upside momentum. After failing to hold $500 earlier, the altcoin’s bullish pressure strengthened, reclaiming $500 and hiking to a high of $520.
At press time, Monero was trading around $516, marking an 11% surge on the daily charts. Over the same period, the altcoin trading volume surged 206%, reflecting strong market activity and steady capital flows.
Why is Monero upside pressure holding? While Monero’s rebound was not driven by events over the past days, investors have shown optimism with the recent structural upgrade.
As such, the THORChain network upgrade introduced native support for Monero swaps. The THORSChain 3.2 upgrade introduced Monero swaps against Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH], and stablecoins.
This improvement has significantly improved XMR access and liquidity. Since it allows swaps XMR non-custodially on cross-chain DEX, it has become a major boost because of Monero restrictions on centralized exchanges.
Are speculators chasing the rally? Incentivized by this development, traders returned with strength across the market. Speculators, for example, have shown greater determination to capitalize on these market gains.
According to CoinGlass data, Monero’s Open Interest (OI) surged 16% to $304 million at press time, while the Derivatives Volume rose 319% to $325 million.
Source: Coinglass When OI and volume rise in tandem, it reflects increased market participation and capital inflow. Thus, traders deployed significant capital into opening new positions.
Meanwhile, the Long/Short Ratio climbed above 1, excluding Binance top traders. At 1.08, the ratio implied that most traders were bullish and were betting on more gains.
Can XMR sustain these gains? Monero‘s bullish pressure has intensified, with demand becoming sustainable, which in turn has strengthened upward momentum. In fact, a look at the momentum indicators validates this view. The altcoin’s Stochastic Momentum Index (SMI) extended its surge, hiking to 60 as of writing.
With the SMI edging deep into the bullish zone, it suggested that upside momentum is strong with bulls enjoying commanding control.
Source: TradingView Likewise, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) also extended its surge, rising to the overbought zone. At 80, RSI further confirms buyers have total control of the market.
As of now, these two indicators signal that the prevailing trend is most likely to continue. Therefore, if the market demand recently witnessed holds, Monero will reclaim $527 and target $546 in the short term.
However, if the attempted upside move fails again, XMR is likely to fall below $500, with $460 as a key support level.
Final Summary Monero extended its bullish structure, rising 9%, to reclaim and flip $500, reaching a local high of $520. XMR’s upside momentum although driven by strong demand , recent THORChain upgrade has incentivized investors to return.
An attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Cosmos EVM to move $50 million of Nesa (NES) off the project’s chain. However, the payout came to $60,000.
Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps traced the wallets involved. Liquidity vanished from the pools before the selling finished, and extreme slippage swallowed almost the entire position.
How the Nesa Exploit UnraveledThe main wallet, 0x9AE7, bought $250,000 of NES and bridged the tokens to Nesa Chain. Bubblemaps said the address was funded through Monero (XMR).
The attacker exploited the bug, inflating that balance by 200 times. He then bridged roughly $50 million of NES back to Ethereum (ETH).
From there, the tokens moved through eight addresses. Those wallets swapped NES for ETH on decentralized exchanges before routing proceeds to centralized platforms.
However, liquidity disappeared from the pools before most of the selling happened. The swaps hit extreme slippage, and the attacker recovered $315,000 against $255,000 spent.
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Cosmos Labs Told Chains to HaltCosmos Labs disclosed the incident on August 24 and advised chains in contact with it to have validators halt.
“Many affected chains have now patched. We continue to provide mitigation information to affected chains. Chains that use a Cosmos EVM version less than v0.6.2 or v0.7.2 are recommended to immediately halt the blockchain and upgrade it to include the patches in those releases,” the team said in an update.
It has not yet named the vulnerability, the affected chains, or the total loss figure. The team has promised an incident report once the response ends.
Four networks running the shared module have reported problems. KiiChain said an attacker repeated the same technique 18 times, draining 148,326,583.15 KII.
Nesa also notified users that it had identified malicious activity exploiting the Cosmos EVM vulnerability on its layer-1. The team said they will bring the services online after a software fix. Other impacted networks include MANTRA and TAC.
Whether other chains running the module took quieter losses will not be clear until Cosmos Labs publishes its report.
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THORChain 3.20 přidává nativní směny Monero (XMR) a Zcash (ZEC) za Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) a stablecoiny bez wrapped verzí. Uživatelé tak mohou obchodovat přímo, bez centralizované burzy a bez předání úschovy.
George Town, Cayman Islands, 25th August 2026, ChainwireBy Chainwire
2 min read
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George Town, Cayman Islands, August 25th, 2026, Chainwire
THORChain, a decentralized exchange, announced the launch of THORChain 3.20, an upgrade introducing native support for Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) swaps.
Until now, moving between privacy coins such as XMR or ZEC and the crypto market has required users to rely on centralized exchanges, custodial services, or additional intermediary steps. With THORChain 3.20, users can natively swap XMR and ZEC against assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and stablecoins directly through THORChain.
No wrapped versions of XMR or ZEC are required. Users do not need to create an account or hand custody of their assets to a centralized entity. This is a significantly more direct route between privacy-focused cryptocurrencies and the most widely used assets in crypto.
For Monero holders, access to the broader crypto market has become an increasingly important issue as XMR continues to be removed or restricted by centralized exchanges. THORChain’s integration provides an alternative based on native assets and self-custody rather than requiring users to deposit their coins with an exchange.
The release is one of THORChain’s most significant upgrades to date. In addition to Monero and Zcash integration, version 3.20 introduces several broader changes to the protocol, including Protocol-Owned Liquidity (POL) and the new Stable Reserve, alongside renewed support for Solana, Base, and BNB. The Stable Reserve introduces stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps with no liquidity fees, and Protocol-Owned Liquidity gives THORChain additional mechanisms for deploying protocol capital across the network.
The move builds on THORChain’s core proposition of allowing users to exchange native cryptocurrencies across otherwise disconnected blockchain networks without handing control of their assets to an intermediary.
THORChain already enables native cross-chain swaps across assets including Bitcoin and Ethereum. The addition of privacy-focused networks expands that model into an area of the crypto market where decentralized access has been far more limited until today.
About THORChain
THORChain is a decentralized exchange that enables users to swap native digital assets across different blockchain networks without relying on wrapped assets or centralized custodians. It allows users to exchange assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other supported cryptocurrencies while maintaining a self-custodial experience.
Attackers have been taking over Macs through a flaw in Apple's screen sharing feature and using them to mine Monero, the Netherlands' National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently said in an updated advisory.
The NCSC said it received a report of attacks on multiple Macs that were reachable through the internet. In each case, the attacker took full control of the machine and installed Monero (XMR) mining software, the Dutch-language advisory states. The agency did not state how many machines were affected, or who was suspected to be behind the attack.
Apple patched the flaw on Aug. 6 in macOS Tahoe 26.6.1, Sequoia 15.7.9 and Sonoma 14.8.9. The company said an attacker on the network could gain access to a Mac through its Screen Sharing feature without a valid password.
Screen Sharing, which lets users remotely view and control their Mac from another computer, is switched off by default, but is commonly used to access "bare-metal" Apple devices hosted on remote servers. Security firm Huntress, in an analysis of the incident, said the flaw tricks the Mac into treating a stranger's connection as one that has already logged in. Because the flaw occurs before authentication, changing or deleting screen sharing passwords does not help.
"Anybody who leverages Apple's Screen Sharing functionality on any supported macOS version needs to apply the most recent security updates immediately," Huntress researcher Ryan Dowd wrote. Dowd also said he identified "tens of thousands of potentially vulnerable hosts" through a Censys search.
Federal cybersecurity agency CISA initially rated the flaw 7.1 out of 10 the day Apple shipped the fix, then replaced that on Friday with a 9.8, near the top of the 10-point scale, according to the record in the National Vulnerability Database. The flaw has not yet been added to the federal catalog of vulnerabilities known to be under attack.
Why Monero? Monero has been a target of so-called "cryptojacking," where mining software is run on hijacked computers, for years given the token's ability to be mined on ordinary computers rather than specialized mining rigs and the private nature of its transactions.
The payoff per machine is thin, however. The entire Monero network issues about 432 XMR a day, worth roughly $179,000 at Sunday's price, split among everyone mining it.
XMR traded at $415.82 on Sunday, up about 3.7% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block's Monero Price page.
Hijacked computing power has surfaced elsewhere this year. In March, an Alibaba-affiliated AI agent called ROME diverted GPUs from its own training runs to mine crypto, according to a technical paper from the teams that built it.
Apple and the NCSC did not immediately respond to The Block's requests for comment.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
Nově vytvořená peněženka vložila na Hyperliquid 3,56 milionu USDC a otevřela 4x long na 36 000 XMR v hodnotě asi 14,33 milionu USD. Cíl zisku je mezi 475 a 516 USD.
Someone really likes Monero right now. A newly created wallet dropped 3.56 million USDC onto Hyperliquid, the decentralized perpetual exchange, and immediately opened a leveraged long position on 36,000 XMR tokens. At entry prices hovering between $395 and $400, the notional value of the trade clocks in at roughly $14.33 million.
The trader then set a take-profit ladder between $475 and $516, suggesting they’re expecting XMR to rally another 20% to 30% from current levels.
Breaking down the trade The position uses approximately 4x leverage, meaning the trader’s $3.56 million in deposited collateral is controlling a position worth more than four times that amount.
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On-chain analytics from Lookonchain first flagged the whale activity on August 10, 2026. The wallet in question appears to have been created specifically for this trade, which is a common pattern among large traders looking to keep their broader portfolio activity under wraps.
XMR has gained nearly 10% over the past week, trading in a range between $393 and $402 after breaking through a descending trendline that had been capping price action.
Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange specializing in perpetual futures that operates on its own Layer-1 blockchain to facilitate on-chain order books and leveraged trading. Perpetual futures allow traders to bet on price movements without actually buying the underlying asset — you’re trading a synthetic contract that tracks XMR’s price, settled in stablecoins, with leverage available to amplify exposure.
This distinction matters for Monero in particular. XMR has been delisted from several major centralized exchanges over the years due to regulatory concerns around its privacy features, making it harder to trade in traditional spot markets. Perpetual futures on platforms like Hyperliquid offer an alternative route for traders who want exposure without navigating the shrinking list of venues that still support direct XMR trading.
A pattern of whale interest This isn’t the first time a large trader has taken a sizable XMR position on Hyperliquid. Earlier in 2026, a similar whale trade surfaced involving a $2.27 million USDC deposit used to open a 2x leveraged long on Monero. The current trade is significantly larger in both collateral and leverage.
The take-profit range of $475 to $516 would represent a roughly 19% to 29% move from the entry zone. At 4x leverage, a 25% adverse move would wipe out the collateral entirely without intervention.
With spot market access becoming increasingly restricted, decentralized perpetual exchanges are absorbing a growing share of XMR volume. That means XMR’s price discovery is happening less on order books where actual coins change hands and more on synthetic markets where stablecoins serve as the medium of exchange. Hyperliquid, which operates without traditional KYC requirements for most users, is a natural landing spot for that flow.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Coinsbuy, a digital asset processing platform built for enterprise and merchant clients, was hit with a major security breach that drained more than $7.9 million from wallets across the Ethereum and TRON networks. The attack, identified on August 10, marks the first publicly known hack of the platform since it launched around 2019.
What makes this one particularly thorny for investigators: the attacker funneled a portion of the stolen crypto into Monero, the privacy coin specifically designed to make transaction tracing as difficult as possible.
How the attack unfolded On-chain monitoring by Specter flagged suspicious activity tied to Coinsbuy-linked wallets, revealing that funds were being systematically drained across two of the industry’s most widely used networks. The attacker targeted assets on both Ethereum and TRON, suggesting either compromised private keys or a vulnerability in how Coinsbuy managed its multi-chain wallet infrastructure.
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After siphoning the funds, the hacker moved quickly to obscure the trail. Portions of the stolen crypto were routed through various exchanges and converted into Monero (XMR), a coin whose privacy features make it notoriously resistant to blockchain forensics.
Damage control and frozen funds Coinsbuy partnered with ChangeNOW, a non-custodial crypto exchange, to freeze a six-figure sum of the stolen assets before the attacker could fully liquidate them.
As a precautionary measure, Coinsbuy temporarily suspended all deposit and withdrawal services across its platform. The pause was relatively brief, with operations restored shortly after.
Current investigations suggest the breach was an isolated incident rather than evidence of some deeper systemic vulnerability within Coinsbuy’s infrastructure.
Why enterprise crypto platforms are increasingly in the crosshairs Coinsbuy occupies a specific niche in the crypto ecosystem. Rather than serving retail traders, it provides digital asset processing tools for businesses and merchants. The platform has operated in this space since roughly 2019, largely flying under the radar of the broader crypto community.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
THORChain testuje v3.20, které má snížit nestabilitu po exploitu a odemknout soft launch Monera jako beta období. Monero je podle týmu téměř připravené, ale čeká na churn.
THORSday Community Podcast #221 ft. CBarraford, KentonC137 & Patriotsounds | July 30, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DRv3.20 is in testing, and Chad hopes it is done this week or early next. It targets the exploit's second-order mainnet instability and carries the fix that would let more affiliates onto the dynamic fee model.ADR31 passed on option 1, and ADR27 passed with it. Minimum slip is now zero bps, so the Rujira app layer can arb pools tighter than the 10 to 20 bps band arbitrageurs hold today, once Rujira's side is switched on.Monero's code is essentially ready and the churn is the blocker. Zcash probably takes the next churn, with Monero after. Chad's separate churn-removal work would not cover $XMR, which brings its own signing algorithm.The plan settled on air is to launch Monero as a soft launch, an openly labelled beta period with its length still open, on what Denny called the most complicated chain client THORChain has added.Protocol-owned liquidity should switch on with v3.20, Chad hopes, and would pick its own pools by comparing depth against revenue. Gas assets are enabled by default, while stablecoins and ERC20s each need a node vote.1. v3.20 Is in Testing, and It Takes the Post-Exploit Wobble With Itv3.20 is being tested now, and Chad hopes testing wraps this week or early next. From there, as he recalls the sequence: exchanges are notified, the release is cut, and community adoption follows roughly a week behind.
Much of the mainnet trouble since the exploit has not been the exploit itself but second-order damage from it, and v3.20 aims at that directly. Chad expects a good percentage of the instability to go away, not all of it.
The stable reserve is in the v3.20 code, but Chad wants more data analysis and simulations before he is confident in it, so he does not expect this release to activate it.
v3.20 also fixes the small bug currently gating additional affiliates on the dynamic fee model, and changes the protocol-owned liquidity Mimir from an economic setting to an operational one.
2. ADR31 and ADR27 Pass, and Minimum Slip Drops to ZeroDenny opened the show wearing a celebratory hat for what he called his Rujira boys: ADR31 passed on option 1, which last week's recap covered as continuing the Rujira relationship as it stands. Denny's read was that the nodes are overwhelmingly excited for the app layer.
ADR27, which passed alongside it, is the one with immediate mechanical consequences. Minimum slip is now zero bps. Arbitrageurs currently pull pools to within roughly 10 to 20 bps on either side of market, and with the floor gone, the app layer can push them as close to zero as is reasonably possible once Rujira's arbing code is switched on. Chad's understanding is that roughly half the income earned doing it would route back to the base protocol.
The dynamic fee model currently discounts swaps partly to absorb slippage. Take the slippage out and Chad thinks THORChain could raise its prices and theoretically hold the same volume.
CodeHans told him it would be done toward the end of the week.
"He's a dev like I'm a dev. So sometimes our timelines aren't exactly on point." (Chad)Chad expects a week or two after it flips on before the effect is readable. Rujira also posted its highest trade volume day on record the day of recording, though Denny did not have the figure to hand. Live ADR vote counts sit on Ray's governance tracker on raynalytics.net.
3. Chad Wants Chain Launches to Stop Waiting on a ChurnMonero is, in Chad's words, pretty much ready to go. THORChain has not been able to churn for a while because of the instability around the exploit, and both Zcash and Monero need a churn to launch.
So Chad started writing a code change to take the churn out of adding a chain, with one carve-out: he said a chain bringing a new signing algorithm would still need a churn, and $XMR is exactly that. The change removes the churn for ordinary chains that reuse an algorithm THORChain already has.
The churn is fragile: every node has to be online and communicating inside a reasonable window, and one node fumbling it forces a retry. THORChain churns every three days, while Chainflip does it roughly once every seven months.
It also gets more fragile as THORChain grows. Every added chain is another way for a churn to fail, since a broken Litecoin means no transactions and no churn. Every added signing algorithm is another key: Monero needs its own private key, making three instead of two, DKLS would be a fourth, and Schnorr a fifth.
"If we lean towards the more secure route, we'll also lean towards a less reliability route. Those two things kind of push against each other." (Chad)The insight underneath the change: you need one key per signing algorithm, not one per chain. From one public key you can derive an address on any chain sharing the same algorithm. Chad's illustration was the TON chain: if it uses an algorithm THORChain already holds a key for, and he guessed EdDSA without being sure, the network could derive a TON address today with none of the TON code written.
Chad rates the work as mid, not a lot of code but a lot of thinking, architecture and edge cases. The branch is most of the way through and needs a large amount of testing.
Zcash probably takes the next churn, unless stagenet testing turns up something significant. Monero follows.
4. Monero Gets a Soft LaunchKenton has been flip-flopping on when to push Monero: promote it at launch and ride the momentum, or wait two months for the pool to stabilize and risk losing that window.
Denny's answer was to announce it and be honest that there could be bugs. Chad supplied the phrase that settled it: soft launch. A beta period, caution advised, in a term everyone already understands.
Denny called this the most complicated chain client THORChain has added, and the team has been testing it for over a month.
"This is the jungle. No one's ever done this." (Denny)Monero locks UTXOs, and Chad was not sure whether the lock runs 20 blocks or about 20 minutes. Either way, no other chain THORChain supports does it. He thinks THORChain consolidates once it holds more than 8 or 13 UTXOs and would have to check the code to confirm what Monero does by default, but applying the same logic there would lock all those funds at once, and an outbound could arrive with nothing spendable behind it.
He said the existing logic might be good enough. If it is not, his fallback is lazy UTXO consolidation: cap how many UTXOs a single spend may use, then work through successive batches until there is enough.
Chad expects arbitrage not to be the worry, since it happens mostly internally rather than on the layer 1. Organic volume is. Worst case is a backlog of outbound transactions, which THORChain Swap could reflect in its outbound time estimate. He thinks that is more likely than not, and would still rather let the network's own data name the real problem than build for it now.
On wallets, Trezor support is now live on THORChain Swap and open for testing, prioritized partly because Kenton called it one of the more popular Monero wallets.
Denny's longer ambition is that THORChain becomes Monero's center of liquidity and sets the real price of $XMR. Chad put a floor of six months on that, probably more, and listed what it needs: chain stability, depth in the pools, and more wallets integrating. He would not call it crazy. Continued $XMR delistings from centralized exchanges only make the case easier.
5. Protocol-Owned Liquidity Returns, and It Picks Its Own PoolsPOL should kick in with v3.20, Chad hopes, since its Mimir moved from economic to operational. He believes that makes it votable but would have to check the code to verify. If it is, Kenton noted, nodes could vote it on and back off if they disagreed. The percentage then goes to a node vote: 5%, 20%, 80%, whatever the community sets.
POL compares a pool's depth against its revenue and favors low depth and high revenue over deep and quiet. It is self-correcting, because as a pool deepens, clearing that revenue-to-depth bar gets harder and the allocation moves on.
Chad does not think anyone can add liquidity to the Bitcoin pool, protocol or otherwise, so $BTC and some other assets would not be eligible.
"I want the liquidity to go to Solana, Zcash and Monero, to build those smaller pools. Bitcoin's got enough." (Chad)Gas assets are enabled by default. Non-gas assets are not, deliberately: Chad did not want protocol income automatically invested into every ERC20 on the network. Stablecoins and specific ERC20s would each need a node vote. He expects $USDC and $USDT to pass without argument, while a more divisive token would draw real debate. Kenton flagged TRON $USDT as one he wants moving.
Chad thinks the allocation runs daily but was not certain without rechecking the code. He expects Solana or Monero to take the early allocations, assuming Monero carries the highest volume in its opening days.
The treasury typically seeds a new pool with about $100k. Kenton asked whether Monero warrants more; Chad said probably not, especially with POL there to supplement, and it is the treasury's call. Kenton's firm ask was that POL be on before Monero goes live.
https://raynalytics.net/dashboards/dynamic-fees6. Dynamic Fees Add Another 0.7% at ShapeShiftShapeShift is still the only affiliate with dynamic fees switched on. Maybe one or two more follow once v3.20 lands, which Chad expects in a week or two.
Chad went back for a baseline. In May, 5.6% of ShapeShift's total swap volume routed to THORChain, with the vast majority of the rest going to Chainflip. June came in around the same 5 to 6%, though he called June a weak data source given how much of it THORChain spent offline after the exploit. The two months agree, which he called consistent.
Last week's July figure was significantly up, but Chad suspected an anomalous $RUNE trader sat inside it, so he pulled a fresh chart with one more week of data. On that longer read, THORChain's share is up another 0.7%, with NEAR Intents and Chainflip down 0.7%. He called it not very much, slightly up rather than significant.
The sample is small, deliberately: Chad puts ShapeShift at roughly $5 million a month in volume, and THORChain picked it rather than testing an experimental feature on SwapKit or another large affiliate first.
7. ADR29 Rev-Share, and Why SwapKit Would Get the ExperimentADR29 would let a partner take a percentage of THORChain's fees instead of charging its own affiliate fee on top. The vote is still in progress.
Kenton relayed Scorch's questions from the governance discussion as he remembered them: could this be net negative? Why give away fees, and what is the proof it worked?
Kenton answered in two parts. For new providers the math is trivial, because their current volume is zero, so anything they bring is additive. For existing partners he agreed with the objection: hand rev-share to the partners THORChain already has and revenue drops 10 to 20% instantly. He does not think they should.
SwapKit is the proposed exception, mechanically rather than sentimentally. Under the design, it would not keep the rev-share: it would put the money into discounting future trades, which is the dynamic fee model again, pushed out from the core of the protocol to the edge where the real-time information is better. Chad's condition for any existing partner is a number attached.
"If we give you 20%, we want to see 30% improvements or something like this." (Chad)Nobody knows the answer, SwapKit included, which is why he calls it an experiment: small, low risk to the protocol, and switched off if it does not work. He wants community approval before trying it. He also likes a side effect: a working rev-share would make SwapKit reliant on THORChain, because Chainflip and NEAR Intents do not currently offer the same thing.
8. Why an Engaged Community Beats a Bigger Market CapAn audience question asked why $TAO is being lined up ahead of $HYPE, $TON or $LINK, if bigger assets mean more volume.
Kenton accepted market cap and volume as a starting point. What matters more is whether the chain's community is engaged and wants to be on THORChain, because that community brings volume with it. Bittensor is engaged, and $TAO is not listed on any other DEX, which would make THORChain the first. Add a large cap whose users are indifferent, Hyperliquid being his example, and he expects little more than some traders and some arb volume.
Same for the smaller privacy coins: Dash, Firo and Zano all have communities that want in, and Kenton expects more activity from those engaged communities than from randomly added tokens.
Chad's read matched. Zcash was added because competitors were doing real volume in it, which is the market telling you the value is there. Monero was added because it is Monero. $TAO has real support behind it, if not quite as much.
"It's not an exact science. You just kind of lick your finger and put it up in the air to get a vibe check to decide what's next." (Chad)Chad added that the process is not political, and market cap is one attribute among several. Kenton expects $HYPE, $TON and $LINK eventually, and said he and StarSquid both want a lot more chains. The churn has been holding the queue up.
9. Chad's Plan to Put Huginn on Mainnet WatchTwo Huginn threads, both early.
The first is documentation. Chad has just started wiring it up: Huginn will read the docs against the codebase and open a code change when it finds a discrepancy, so the docs stop drifting behind fast-moving code.
The second he has wanted for a long time and kept deferring behind the dynamic fee model. A model cannot watch mainnet in real time, because it is too much data and would cost far too much, which Chad called completely impractical. So in his design, mathematical heuristics would do the watching and post to Discord when something looks anomalous, whether slow block times, strange prices or odd logs. Huginn would read that channel, open a thread on the event, run a deep analysis, and post its report where developers, node operators and community members all see the same data at the same time.
Chad named the failure mode: false positives. His example was Huginn hallucinating that the Bitcoin pool is empty, with a co-host adding the Dev Discord screenshot landing on Twitter while the pool sits perfectly fine. The thread is the mitigation, because technical node operators can look and say so publicly. He does not think false positives can ever be eliminated, since today's AI is non-deterministic in much the way humans are.
Huginn does already re-audit. Whenever a new model ships, Chad points it at the codebases again, and it re-reviews any file changed since its last pass and opens a GitLab issue when it finds something significant.
Separately, THORChain is working on being legible to AI agents. A community question about the Robinhood talks brought it up, and Kenton pointed to Robinhood's agent-facing interface: he said IBEC, who works on THORChain Swap with Unstoppable Wallet, could build something comparable. Chad has a developer assigned to AI work and handed over the MCP server code he wrote for Badlands, an unlaunched THORChain project, which already reads THORNode and Midgard data. He is asking for community ideas, on Discord rather than Twitter or Telegram, and floated an online AI developer conference with $RUNE for the top three entries.
What to Watchv3.20 shipping: testing wraps this week or early next, Chad hopes, then exchanges are notified, the release is cut, and community adoption follows about a week behind, he thinks. Maybe one or two more affiliates join the dynamic fee model once it lands, which would finally give it a larger sample.Zcash first, Monero second: Zcash probably takes the next churn, unless stagenet testing turns up something significant, then Monero as an openly labelled soft-launch beta.POL's percentage: if v3.20 turns POL on as hoped, a node vote sets the allocation percentage, with likely follow-up votes to enable stablecoins and specific ERC20s.ADR29 and TOR anchors: both votes are still in progress. If the community approves ADR29, watch the SwapKit trial against Chad's condition of returning more than it costs, with a switch-off if it misses. On TOR anchors, adding more stablecoins for valuing TOR, his default is yes.Huginn's mainnet watch: still a design rather than a deployment. Expect false positives when it does land, since Chad does not think they can be eliminated.Possible Bitcoin forks, and a Discord gap: Kenton flagged talk of one or two Bitcoin forks, his read being that they concern data and ordinals in blocks, which he put at about half right. As the code stands, forked coins in THORChain's Bitcoin pool would most likely be burned, and Chad would only spend engineering time rescuing them if the amount justifies it. Separately, the community Discord is closing with a few channels expected in the dev Discord, so THORChain Swap ticket support may pause for a week or two.Next up: Depouch joins on Saturday. Next Thursday is a Rujira focus with Pragmatic Monkey and CodeHans while Chad is on vacation.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
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Overview This is the v0.18.5.1 release of the Monero software. This recommended release includes a large number of bug fixes.
Some highlights of this release are:
Daemon: display IPv6 connections (#10611) Daemon: fix slow shutdown with Tor/I2P enabled (#10698) Daemon: avoid unsafe pidfile truncation (#10608) Daemon: use latest hard fork block for approximate blockchain height (#10580) Daemon: restrict get_alt_blocks_hashes RPC (#10610) Daemon: fix wrong block_weight in handle_get_objects (#10715) Daemon: improve incoming block scan table handling (#10838) Daemon: restore safe sync mode when target height drops (#10598) Daemon: canonicalize Tor and I2P hostnames (#10638, #10704) Daemon: fix dangling iterator in remote host checks (#10649) Daemon: improve duplicate transaction handling in handle_notify_new_transactions (#10836) Daemon: fix use-after-free in txpool prune (#10710) ZMQ: cap aggregate receive size (#10757) ZMQ: apply restricted-mode privacy filtering to get_transaction_pool (#10543) Wallet: store multisig nonce erasure before returning signed txset (#10754) Wallet: hardening against malicious remote nodes (#10773, #10776, #10774) Wallet RPC: add missing trusted daemon check to rescan_spent (#10542) Wallet RPC: fix describe_transfer source entry (#10592) Wallet RPC: preserve payment ID when editing address book (#10590) Wallet RPC: remove unused finalize_multisig endpoint (#10615) Miner: fix thread 0 always using secure JIT (#10743) RandomX: update to v1.2.2 (#10571) Fix memory leak with readline (#10568) Fix memory leak with RandomX integration on Windows (#10546) Various bug fixes and improvements The complete list of changes is available on GitHub, along with the source code.
Contributors for this Release This release was the direct result of 13 people who worked to put out 102 commits containing 1094 new lines of code. We'd like to thank them very much for their time and effort. In no particular order, they are:
jeffro256 tobtoht SNeedlewoods selsta greatjourney589 iuyua9 glv2 alhudz nahuhh woodser ComputeryPony SChernykh j-berman Download The new binaries can be downloaded from the Downloads page or from the direct links below.
Windows, 64-bit Windows, 32-bit macOS, Intel macOS, ARM Linux, 64-bit Linux, 32-bit Linux, armv7 Linux, armv8 Linux, riscv64 Android, armv7 Android, armv8 FreeBSD, 64-bit Hashes If you would like to verify that you have downloaded the correct file, please use the following SHA256 hashes:
monero-win-x64-v0.18.5.1.zip, cf2ae8273977697d9ef2031c7337b781e6e5936578f602444b2990a173a2437d monero-win-x86-v0.18.5.1.zip, f79746868794786ba4ca3c5a30191263ffb0b9a4ab1c0ffcbe30fd5d04986380 monero-mac-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 82e305bbf6128b386571bed173dae316f9dd06c4ee1217c5eda849444bec89a9 monero-mac-armv8-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, dba08921841e675384ce019fd7c93b59fe7b1e6edaa0a3cf0e3253e263f61864 monero-linux-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 22a7dda7b0cb699fdd6b7674c3b4a4465b337cc98a54983523b759e1e7cc9958 monero-linux-x86-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 68783d76d9eac543d593ca1bdfa9c7eb540ec6c646acc68421702465c1d86182 monero-linux-armv8-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, c0caf042cb7c7b760f5ad6be188084b59352440b32990a78b8051497b9398dbc monero-linux-armv7-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, bd6693ac411919d474d98c9e7d7bae1f03e7ef7f1d779a15e2ba3a188c958d36 monero-linux-riscv64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, 28ead34fa4320ea6809f16c4b064d3b430e71caf3155d25677cc624388fc0ee5 monero-android-armv8-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, a2c0fb240c5eaa947f5a2382ece4613c59b299645ad4d1480ef24e71b8aa8c8f monero-android-armv7-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, daa56844251a9e9f296caaaafcf72c60dade54ae93146085d627ffc883b0fec3 monero-freebsd-x64-v0.18.5.1.tar.bz2, cc32bb64fb577254fe24441e2db0b722dfedff5c953427ffbf396dc16f0feb62 A GPG-signed list of the hashes is at https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/hashes.txt and should be treated as canonical, with the signature checked against the appropriate GPG key in the source code (in /utils/gpg_keys). To ensure that the files you download are those originally posted by the maintainers, you should both check that the hashes of your files match those on the signed list, and that the signature on the list is valid.
Two guides are available to guide you through the verification process: Verify binaries on Windows (beginner) and Verify binaries on Linux, Mac, or Windows command line (advanced).
Norská Kripos zatkla 28 mužů v sedmi zemích kvůli platbám v Moneru za přístup k dětskému sexuálnímu materiálu na dark webu. Zajistila také přes 460 položek a zachránila tři děti.
Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service, known as Kripos, announced the arrest of 28 men across seven countries following an operation conducted in early June 2026. The suspects allegedly used Monero to pay for access to child sexual abuse material on multiple dark web forums. Three children were safeguarded, and over 460 items were seized, including electronic devices, crypto wallets, and illegal drugs.
The arrests spanned Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany. Europol supported the operation, underscoring the kind of multi-jurisdictional coordination that has become increasingly common in dark web takedowns.
How Monero became the payment method of choice, and how that’s changing Monero sits in a specific corner of the crypto market: privacy coins, designed to obscure sender, receiver, and transaction amount by default. Bitcoin leaves a public trail. Monero, in theory, does not. That’s why it became the preferred currency for illicit dark web transactions.
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Kripos developed new methods for tracing Monero transactions in 2025. The agency has not disclosed exactly how those methods work, which is deliberate. But the operational result speaks for itself: 28 arrests across seven countries tied to payments made in a coin that many assumed was beyond reach.
More arrests are expected as the investigation continues, according to Kripos.
One suspect was also reported to have used artificial intelligence extensively to generate illegal material. Some victims were identified as family members of the suspects.
What this means for privacy coins and the investors who hold them Major exchanges, including Kraken and Binance, delisted Monero in various markets between 2021 and 2023 under regulatory pressure. The Financial Action Task Force has repeatedly flagged privacy coins as high-risk assets for money laundering and illicit finance.
This operation fits into a broader pattern. The Kidflix takedown and Operation Grayskull in 2025 collectively led to hundreds of arrests globally and relied heavily on forensic crypto analysis.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Americké OFAC zařadilo na sankční seznam 134 digitálních adres peněženek napojených na ISIS-K, včetně 131 adres na TRON a 3 na Monero. Tether okamžitě zmrazil prostředky na všech 131 TRON peněženkách.
Key Points U.S. Treasury’s OFAC designated 134 digital currency addresses connected to ISIS-K operations, comprising 131 TRON wallets and 3 Monero addresses These addresses processed more than $1.4 million in incoming transactions since 2023 and dispatched over $880,000 in outgoing transfers Tether immediately froze all wallet holdings on the 131 TRON-based addresses after the official designation OFAC simultaneously sanctioned two Brazilian citizens and four business entities connected to PCC criminal organization, responsible for laundering over $30 million through digital currencies Blockchain analytics companies such as Chainalysis have integrated the sanctioned addresses into their tracking systems On July 1, 2026, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), an agency within the U.S. Treasury Department, expanded its sanctions registry to include 134 digital wallet addresses associated with ISIS-Khorasan, the terror group’s branch operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Tether Freezes USDT in All 131 ISIS-K-Linked TRON Wallets
OFAC updated its sanctions list for ISIS-K, adding 134 crypto wallet identifiers, including 131 TRON addresses and three Monero addresses. Chainalysis said the TRON addresses had received more than USD 1.4 million since… pic.twitter.com/53AgCBUGKr
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 2, 2026
The designation encompasses 131 addresses on the TRON network and 3 on Monero. Following the announcement, Tether immediately took enforcement action by freezing assets held in all 131 TRON wallets.
ISIS-K received its initial designation as a Specially Designated Terrorist Group in September 2015. The organization maintains operations throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan, and certain Central Asian territories, conducting violent attacks against civilian populations in multiple nations.
The terror group’s propaganda division, known as al-Azaim Media Foundation, has leveraged cryptocurrency fundraising campaigns to secure operational funding. These solicitation efforts have been distributed through various websites and encrypted messaging services, accepting donations in TRON, Monero, and Bitcoin.
Transaction Activity in Sanctioned Addresses The 131 TRON wallets included in this enforcement action accumulated incoming transfers exceeding $1.4 million from 2023 onward. During the same timeframe, these addresses dispatched outgoing transactions totaling more than $880,000.
Blockchain forensic investigation reveals the wallets interacted with legitimate cryptocurrency platforms. Multiple addresses also transferred funds to cryptocurrency exchange services operating in Syria, based on data from Chainalysis.
This enforcement action represents the latest in a series of OFAC measures against ISIS cryptocurrency financing. In 2023, the agency sanctioned a Maldives-based ISIS-K operative whose TRON wallets maintained connections to Iranian crypto exchanges. A month prior to this current action, OFAC sanctioned a Syrian network of money service operations used to convert funds for ISIS financial facilitators.
PCC Criminal Network Faces Concurrent Sanctions In a coordinated enforcement measure issued the same day, OFAC imposed sanctions on two individuals from Brazil and four corporate entities linked to Primeiro Comando da Capital, commonly referred to as PCC.
PCC represents a major Latin American criminal enterprise headquartered in São Paulo with operational presence within the United States. According to OFAC’s findings, the organization processed more than $30 million in narcotics-related revenue, utilizing digital currencies to transfer illicit proceeds from the United States to Brazil.
This marks OFAC’s third enforcement action targeting PCC. The organization initially received its designation in December 2021. A subsequent action in March 2024 targeted a specific individual engaged in financial laundering activities for the criminal network.
According to monitoring conducted by TRM Labs, the aggregate transaction volume across all 134 newly sanctioned addresses exceeds $2 million.
Blockchain compliance providers, including Chainalysis, have confirmed integration of the designated addresses into their surveillance platforms, enabling financial institutions to conduct exposure assessments.
For digital asset service providers and banking institutions, these designations mandate immediate revisions to sanctions screening protocols and transaction surveillance infrastructure.
THORChain Podcast #198: Live Monero Demo ft. jpthor & KentonC137 | May 14, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DRJP ran a live Monero demo on a 7-node THORChain chainnet with real funds, executing the first end-to-end decentralized $RUNE to $XMR swap with full vault auditability across signing and non-signing nodes.The implementation uses a deterministic view key (SHA-512 of "thorchain view key") plus on-chain key images and per-transaction signing keys to make every Monero inbound, outbound, and vault balance publicly auditable.Monero runs as a Rust sidecar alongside Bifrost, built on Luke Parker's Serai signing stack and the Monero Oxide wallet library, plumbed into THORChain by Boone.JP and Chad disagree on running multiple Asgard vaults versus a single vault for Monero, a question to be resolved before the mainnet rollout.The code is functional today, but mainnet is gated on more stress testing. When it ships, expect a guarded launch with small pools.Where things stand (June 2026): This recap revisits JP's live demo from May 14. In the weeks since, Chad Barraford confirmed on THORSday #209 that Monero now works end-to-end on the chainnet test environment, with real $XMR swaps, liquidity adds and removes, and churns all confirmed. A live $XMR launch is targeted for roughly a month after THORChain's trading restart, barring a bug that forces a v3.20 change, with Zcash ($ZEC) one to two weeks behind. Mainnet is not live yet.
IntroductionThis was not a typical podcast episode. JP joined Kenton and ran a fully live Monero implementation on a real-fund chainnet: seven nodes churning, two Asgard vaults, key gens, key signings, the works. By the end of the call, JP had executed the first end-to-end decentralized $RUNE to $XMR swap, audited the transaction with a key image and a signing key, and confirmed his receiving wallet got paid. This was THORChain producing the proof that years of Monero integration work actually delivers.
What follows is a recap of the architecture, the audit primitives, the live result, and the open questions still on the table before mainnet.
1. The Live Demo: Seven Nodes, Real Funds, Real SwapJP began by tearing down his existing chainnet and redeploying it from scratch. The deploy spooled up seven THORChain nodes and one genesis vault, then churned into a six-active-node, two-Asgard-vault configuration. He added 0.5 $XMR and 500 $RUNE to each active vault, waited for confirmations, then fired off a 100 $RUNE to $XMR swap back to his own Monero wallet.
It worked. The signing nodes generated the transaction, produced a key image and a transaction signing key, propagated those to the non-signing nodes for verification, then settled the outbound. JP pasted his recipient address and the transaction key into a Monero block explorer's proof-of-payment tool and confirmed receipt.
"Real money, real funds. I love it when a plan comes together." (JP)Across all seven nodes, signing, non-signing, and standby, the reported $XMR balance converged. The on-chain vault state matched the actual Monero wallet state, and gas accounting was correct. After the swap, the protocol began an unhalted churn, generating two new Asgard vaults and migrating funds in multiple rounds without breaking auditability.
2. How THORChain Audits Monero Without a Privacy BackdoorThe core challenge with Monero on a transparent chain is making the vault state verifiable, since Monero hides addresses and amounts by default. JP's solution rests on three primitives.
Deterministic view key. Every THORChain Monero vault uses the same private view key, derived from SHA-512("thorchain view key"). It is global and public, so anyone can see inbounds to any THORChain Monero vault and confirm the amounts. Standard Monero wallets never expose their view key. THORChain's vaults do, by design.
Key images. A view key alone does not reveal when outputs are spent. For every inbound, THORChain kicks off a key image ceremony, essentially a 2/3 threshold ceremony similar to a key signing ceremony. The resulting key image is stored on-chain. When that key image later appears as spent on the Monero blockchain, anyone can audit the vault's debits.
Transaction signing keys. For every outbound a signing subset produces, they also generate a transaction signing key and propagate it to the non-signing nodes. Plug the transaction key plus the recipient address into a Monero proof tool, and the destination and amount are verifiable. This is how the rest of the network confirms the signers did what they were supposed to, and did not reroute funds.
Put together, these three primitives let anyone audit every Monero inbound, every spent output, and every outbound on every THORChain vault, in real time. As Kenton summarized it on the call:
"THORChain doesn't become more private by adding Monero. THORChain is actually bringing more publicity to the Monero transactions that occur on THORChain. Anything private has to happen on the Monero chain itself." (Kenton)JP agreed:
"THORChain actually honestly doesn't know that Monero is a privacy chain. THORChain thinks Monero is just literally Bitcoin." (JP)The audit model is what makes the integration possible. Without it, JP noted, the nodes could just steal.
3. Architecture: A Rust Sidecar Built on Serai and Monero OxideMonero is the first chain client where THORChain runs a dedicated sidecar process alongside the Go-based Bifrost. The sidecar is written in Rust because it needs to host the FROST signing engine for Monero, and because the entire Rust Monero stack is more mature than any Go equivalent. Bifrost orchestrates: it tells the sidecar when to key gen, when to key sign, with what amount and to what address. The sidecar executes.
The foundation is Luke Parker's work. Luke, the lead developer of Serai, built both the modular FROST stack THORChain depends on for threshold key generation and signing, and Monero Oxide, the Rust-based Monero wallet library THORChain uses for everything from view key derivation to vault address generation to transaction construction, decoy selection, and fee computation.
"All the Monero stuff is based on Luke's work. We just kind of plumbed it into THORChain's semantics." (JP)Boone did the plumbing. JP credited Boone explicitly for taking Luke's libraries and adapting them to THORChain's Bifrost architecture.
THORChain also runs a fork of the Monero TS wallet library, published on the THORChain GitHub, which adds 255-byte TX extras. That is the change that lets THORChain memos ride alongside Monero transactions. Any wallet integrating Monero with THORChain needs roughly three lines of code to adopt the same pattern, and 255-byte memos are already valid on the Monero base layer, JP noted, which most integrators do not realize.
4. Handling Monero's QuirksMonero behaves differently from Bitcoin in ways the implementation has to absorb.
10-block lock per UTXO. Every Monero output is locked for 10 blocks after receipt, roughly 20 minutes. The signers track lock state per UTXO and refuse to sign until the spendable balance is available. THORChain does not see the lock directly; it just schedules the outbound and the signers say "talk to me in nine blocks." If one vault is fully locked, THORChain reschedules the transaction to the other active vault. Streaming swaps are not affected, JP confirmed, because Chad recently shipped a feature that begins the streaming swap clock as soon as the deposit kicks off confirmation counting.
Gas budget. Monero gas accounting is hard, so THORChain hardcodes a 120,000-unit budget per outbound, about 42 cents at current prices. Real transactions usually come in closer to 4 cents, so there is a roughly 10x buffer. Simple, predictable, slightly overpaid.
Zero-output change. Every Monero transaction must have two outputs (the real destination plus a dummy from a decoy ring). When THORChain does not actually need a change output, it produces a zero-amount second output and ignores it on the receiving side. This applies to consolidations, migrations, and any one-recipient outbound.
Consolidation strategy. JP proposes consolidating 10 UTXOs down to 5 at a time rather than larger batches. Gas scales linearly with UTXOs, and so does signing time. Keeping consolidations bounded keeps both manageable.
Birthday-based scanning. Each Monero vault saves its creation block height on-chain. Sidecars scan from that birthday forward rather than from Monero genesis. A rescan mode lets any node rebuild its sidecar inventory from scratch by pulling addresses, birthdays, key images, and the view key from THORChain itself. JP says he has tested it ad nauseam.
Old vault refunds. If someone sends Monero to a retired vault, THORChain cannot auto-refund because it cannot identify the sender address. The funds flow to the latest active vault instead, available for a manual treasury refund if the sender produces their transaction private key to prove ownership.
5. Single Vault or Multiple? An Open DebateThe most consequential open question from the episode: should THORChain run one Monero vault or many?
JP's position is to run multiple Asgard vaults, the same way Bitcoin and Ethereum work today. Multiple vaults give the network redundancy when 10-block UTXO locks tie up one vault's spendable balance, and they limit the impact of any single signer set going offline. The trade-off is more key gens, more key image ceremonies, and unproven scalability of FROST Monero across all 100 nodes simultaneously.
Chad's position is to run a single vault. With one vault, every node is a signer, which lets the implementation skip the multi-vault key image generation overhead and simplify the protocol surface area.
Kenton pushed back on the disconnect directly, telling JP that he and Chad clearly need to sort this out: Chad is saying one vault, JP is saying multiple. JP indicated multiple is more aligned with how the other chain clients already work, and that moving to a DKLS-based ECDSA TSS library could eventually make single-vault designs viable. He will continue the conversation with Chad before mainnet, and Kenton suggested running both configurations on mainnet for a few weeks each to observe behavior. The decision is open.
6. AI-Assisted Development, and the "Vibe Coded" QuestionJP addressed criticism that the Monero implementation is "vibe coded" head-on. His view: AI tooling (Claude, Codex, GPT 5.5) lets him work an order of magnitude faster than five years ago, when the team spent a year building the original Bitcoin Bifrost. Tasks that used to require hand-grepping logs across 100 nodes now take minutes when AI can crawl them.
But the workflow is not hands-off. JP described it as juggling, with constant supervision required: one slip and the whole thing crashes down. He uses separate AI conversations per stack component and trains each with project-specific skills.
"The code only works if it's correct. If it didn't work, then you would not see these correct numbers. Gas accounting would be wrong, the balances wouldn't match." (JP)Kenton's framing: it does not matter whether the code starts as vibe-coded or hand-written. What matters is whether it gets reviewed, tested, and verified to work. By that test, the Monero implementation is human-approved code regardless of how the first draft was produced.
7. Future-Proofing for FCMP++ and CarrotAn audience question raised the upcoming Monero hardfork, which introduces FCMP++ (Full-Chain Membership Proofs Plus Plus) and the Carrot addressing protocol. Carrot adds outgoing view keys, forward secrecy, and other privacy and usability features while maintaining backward compatibility with existing Monero addresses.
JP's expectation is that the upgrade should be plug-and-play for THORChain. Luke Parker's Serai and Monero Oxide stacks will absorb the changes upstream. When the hardfork ships, THORChain will pause Monero trading, upgrade its sidecar dependencies, and unpause, with no expected protocol-level rework on THORChain's side and no expected long downtime.
What to WatchMore stress testing on chainnet. JP planned to run automated scripts that throw every edge case at the implementation: bad memos, wrong gas, old vault refunds, mismatched routing. If solvency holds after sustained abuse, the path to mainnet is clear.JP and Chad converging on vault architecture. Single vault or multiple is unresolved and material. Watch for a follow-up between them.Chainnet to stagenet to mainnet rollout. The chainnet code is the mainnet code, and the deploy pattern is identical. Mainnet is a confidence question, not a code question.A guarded launch when live. Expect small pools and small trades at first. JP and Kenton both flagged that Monero could need several months on mainnet before it is fully battle-tested.FCMP++ and Carrot hardfork handling. Monero's hardfork is on the near-term horizon. The plan is a brief THORChain pause for sidecar upgrades, then resume."We could launch this on mainnet tomorrow. It just depends on how confident we are that we're not going to hit a bug." (JP)More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
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Boone navrhl ADR29, který by pro Monero nastavil minimální swapový poplatek specifický pro dané aktivum, například 50 bps na každou stranu obchodu s $XMR. Návrh není schválený ani nasazený.
THORChain Podcast #212: ADR29 Fee Debate ft. BooneW, KentonC137 & Patriotsounds | June 28, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DRBoone proposed ADR29, an asset-specific minimum swap fee lever built with Monero in mind. His working example is a 50 bps floor on each $XMR leg, but the proposal is not approved or implemented.ADR29 is designed to complement, not replace, THORChain’s dynamic fee model. When both apply, the protocol would use the higher floor.The core disagreement was strategic: charge more where THORChain has a permissionless edge, or keep fees low enough to win volume and discourage competitors.Higher Monero fees could feed more system income into protocol-owned liquidity, helping a shallow Monero pool deepen without depending entirely on outside LPs.The second half moved from fees to distribution: affiliate tooling, a swap widget, more browser wallets, and possible mobile paths for THORChain Swap.IntroductionPodcast #212 was supposed to feature Amir Taaki, but technical problems cut that conversation short. Boone joined while out shopping, without video and with one specific mission: make sure the community understood ADR29.
That intervention turned into a full debate about what THORChain should optimize for. Boone argued for monetizing permissionless demand now. Kenton argued that low prices build a longer-lasting moat. Denny focused on whether decentralized governance can manage manual fee levers quickly enough. Nobody pretended the answer was settled, which made the discussion more useful.
The result was less a sales pitch for one proposal and more a map of the choices around Monero, dynamic fees, protocol-owned liquidity, and THORChain’s route to a larger market.
1. ADR29: A Fee Floor for Each AssetToday, THORChain applies minimum swap fee floors broadly by asset class. The same L1 floor covers many unrelated assets, even when their liquidity, competition and market structure look completely different.
Boone’s proposed ADR29 adds per-asset minimum slip settings. Instead of raising the L1 floor for every pool to address one asset, nodes could set a different floor for Monero, Bitcoin or another specific asset. The proposal also allows an explicit zero override and optional economic caps on those operational fee levers.
Monero is the reason Boone built it. THORChain is preparing a genuinely permissionless $XMR route, while many existing cross-chain options rely on centralized or permissioned infrastructure. Boone’s working number was 50 bps per Monero leg. On an asset-to-$XMR double swap, that would produce a combined floor near 1%, roughly where he said many existing Monero venues already price their service.
His pitch is not simply “charge more because we can.” It is that THORChain could offer a better product at a familiar market price, then route the additional system income toward deeper protocol-owned liquidity.
The proposal remains an initial draft. Even if the code is accepted, the per-asset floor would be off unless nodes chose to use it.
"All it does is give the nodes more optionality." (Boone)2. Why ADR29 Is Not a Replacement for Dynamic FeesThe episode repeatedly returned to the difference between ADR29 and ADR26, THORChain’s dynamic L1 fee model.
Dynamic fees tune the minimum fee for eligible L1 swaps associated with approved affiliate THORNames and trading pairs. The aim is to discover whether a lower or higher fee produces more protocol revenue for that flow. ADR29 is broader in a different direction: it sets a governance floor for an individual asset and also reaches activity that the affiliate-based model does not, including arbitrage flow through trade and secured assets.
Boone estimated that arbitrage accounts for roughly 60% of THORChain volume. In a separate two-hour sample, he found that L1 swaps with affiliate fees represented about 33% of volume. Those were his working observations, not a complete protocol study, but they explain his concern: a dynamic feature limited to qualifying L1 affiliate flow may leave much of the network untouched.
He also questioned the signal used to adjust dynamic fees. If the controller reacts to revenue without accounting for changes in the wider exchange market, a high-volume market day could look like proof that the fee changed correctly even when macro conditions caused the move. His suggestion was to normalize against global exchange volume so the controller reads less noise.
ADR29 is designed to coexist with that experiment. If an affiliate’s dynamic fee and an asset-specific floor both apply, the higher value wins. Nodes can still test dynamic fees first, learn from live behavior, and consider ADR29 later.
"This is not a replacement. This is not instead of Chad’s dynamic fees." (Boone)3. The Real Debate: Revenue Now or Market Share Later?Once the mechanics were clear, the conversation became a strategy argument.
Boone sees two markets. The first is the enormous global exchange market, where centralized exchanges dominate and most users optimize for familiarity, price and convenience. The second is the much smaller permissionless market, where THORChain already has a meaningful edge.
His preferred sequence is to monetize the smaller market first. Higher-margin permissionless flow could build POL, fund marketing, strengthen node participation and give the network more resources before it attacks the mass market. In his framing, trying to beat subsidized competitors such as Near Intents on price today risks joining a race where other protocols can spend emissions or investor capital to offer uneconomic swaps.
Kenton pushed the other way. A high Monero fee could invite competitors, while a low fee makes the market less attractive to enter. More importantly, users who discover THORChain as the cheapest permissionless route may carry that first impression forward and spread it by word of mouth. If the long-term target is centralized exchange volume, price has to be part of the conversion story.
That question also reaches aggregators. SwapKit and other routers can move flow quickly when another venue offers a better quote, so loyalty may matter less than execution. Boone saw that as a reason fees can be lowered later when competition arrives. Kenton saw it as a reason to undercut competitors before they gain a foothold.
Denny added a governance concern. A centralized business can move a pricing lever quickly. A decentralized network may be slower to reach consensus, making an algorithmic approach more attractive than frequent manual adjustments. He also argued for getting the $XMR pool stable before experimenting with higher fees.
"Long term, of course we want to capture all swap volume." (Boone)The disagreement stayed productive because everyone shared the same destination. The open question is which stepping stone gets THORChain there.
4. POL Turns Fees Into Permissionless LiquidityADR29 matters beyond the fee itself. Boone tied it directly to protocol-owned liquidity.
If a shallow Monero pool generates higher fees and a portion of system income flows into POL, the protocol can progressively own more of that pool. That creates liquidity which does not leave when external LPs decide the return is no longer attractive. It also reduces the problem of asking outside capital to absorb the early operational risk of a new chain integration.
Boone described POL as an asset rather than a liability. If an early $XMR issue costs the pool money, the protocol can learn and recover without owing an external LP. Denny agreed that this makes POL especially powerful for a complex launch like Monero.
The wider security argument is equally important. A permissionless protocol can still become dependent on liquidity providers or market makers who withdraw during stress. Boone pointed to solver and market-maker systems that can lose liquidity exactly when markets become chaotic. POL is always-on capital controlled by protocol rules.
"You don’t just need a permissionless protocol. You need permissionless liquidity." (Boone)This is why the fee debate and the POL debate cannot be separated. ADR29 asks what each asset should pay. POL asks whether part of that income can become a permanent moat.
5. Distribution: Widgets, Wallets and the Next Front EndThe final major thread was how users actually reach THORChain.
Kenton outlined the immediate THORChain Swap priorities: finish Keplr Wallet support, complete the affiliate page, ship a reusable swap widget, fix the current bug backlog, and add more browser wallets. The affiliate flow is intended to let a partner register, receive an API key, configure its THORName, set a fee and preferred payout asset, then generate widget code for its own website.
The widget is central to Kenton’s distribution thesis. A newsletter or partner site can embed THORChain swaps, earn affiliate fees, and lend its existing credibility to the interface. Kenton said he has already arranged a year-long package of 12 articles with DeFi Llama and wants the supporting dashboard and destination experience ready before promotion ramps up.
Mobile remains the harder problem. IBEC raised a passkey-based wallet path, while Boone suggested he could help as an AI-assisted developer. Another option is a memoless mobile app that works with wallets users already have, avoiding yet another seed phrase. A fuller route would be to fork the open-source Unstoppable Wallet and keep applying upstream improvements, but that was brainstorming, not a committed build.
The team’s sequencing was practical: improve the existing frontend, make integrations self-serve, expand wallet connectivity, then decide whether a dedicated mobile wallet earns its place on the roadmap.
"Strong opinions loosely held." (Kenton)That line captured the whole episode. ADR29 now gives the community something concrete to evaluate, but its value will come from testing assumptions rather than defending camps.
What to WatchADR29 review: The draft merge request needs technical review and governance discussion. It is proposed, not live.ADR26 first: Dynamic fees may get a live trial before ADR29 advances, creating real evidence about eligible flow and fee sensitivity.Monero launch quality: The first priority is a stable $XMR pool and safe small swaps. Fee experiments can follow once the product works reliably.POL governance: Watch whether nodes gain a more responsive operational lever for directing system income into protocol-owned liquidity.Distribution work: Keplr, affiliate onboarding, the swap widget and additional browser wallets are the near-term THORChain Swap milestones.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
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THORChain je po zhruba měsíci opět online a znovu umožňuje swapy. Monero se v v3.19.2 přiblížilo mainnetu, ale první obchody mají být malé kvůli mělké likviditě.
THORSday Community Podcast #211 ft. CBarraford, KentonC137 & Patriotsounds | June 25, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube
By Raynalytics
TL;DRTHORChain trading is back after roughly a month offline. The team framed the recovery as one of the harder classes of incidents to debug, but the network is live again and the roadmap can move.$XMR moved closer. v3.19.2 includes the Solana churn fix and embeds Monero code, with Chad saying $XMR could land closer to two weeks after trading resumed than the month previously discussed.The security path is becoming clearer: publish the TSS library around v3.20, keep reviewing the GG20 patch surface with Huginn and Soda Labs, then move chain by chain toward DKLS and FROST.Growth work did not stop during the pause. Morpheus, Keplr Wallet, affiliate onboarding, KOL campaigns, x402 payments and MCP tooling all came up as ways to make THORChain more reachable.POL became the biggest governance topic. The debate is now about how aggressively THORChain should route income into protocol-owned liquidity, especially if Monero needs deep pools quickly.1. Trading Is Back, and the Roadmap Can Breathe AgainDenny opened the first post-restart THORSday like a man who had been waiting a month to press the party button. Confetti fired, the desk-pop jokes landed, and the simple message was the one everyone wanted to hear: THORChain is back online and swapping again.
Under the celebration, Chad Barraford kept the explanation grounded. This was not a normal bug hunt where a developer can read logs, isolate a bad branch and patch the issue within hours. The exploit lived in peer-to-peer validator communication and key-share behavior, which meant the team had to infer the attack path from limited evidence and then make sure the thing they found was the thing that mattered.
"This kind of attack is one of the hardest to recover from." (Chad)That is why the restart took as long as it did. The network had to recover from a sophisticated cryptography attack, deal with verification and node issues along the way, and then get back into a state where the team could safely resume trading. Now that it has, Chad's posture was simple: the team can get back to the roadmap.
For users, the practical message is equally simple. Swaps are back through THORChain Swap, and the ecosystem has breathing room again. For the dev side, the next release is already queued.
2. Monero Moves From "Later" to "Soon"The biggest roadmap update was Monero. Chad said v3.19.2 is being cut with two important pieces: a fix for a Solana churn issue, and the Monero integration embedded in the release. The $XMR code still needs more internal testing and node readiness, but the tone changed from "roughly a month after restart" to "closer to two weeks."
The caveat matters. Nodes still need to build and sync Monero infrastructure, which Chad estimated around two to three days depending on resources. He also said there is a chance Zcash and Monero could launch together, but he did not frame that as a promise.
Denny tied the moment back to the privacy thesis. For the first time, Monero holders would get permissionless layer 1 to layer 1 access without bridges, wrapped assets, accounts or KYC. He also made sure nobody mistook that excitement for a guarantee of a perfect launch.
"The pools will be shallow. Do not attempt big swaps at first." (Denny)That warning should be repeated. Mainnet is different from testnet. New chain clients have always had their own quirks, and Monero is the most complex chain THORChain has added. The likely launch path is small swaps first, close monitoring and a willingness to pause if something behaves badly.
The shout-outs were important too. Boone started the Monero chain-client process, and Luke Parker's work through Serai gave THORChain an open-source FROST TSS base that helped make the integration possible. Testing never fully stopped during the trading pause. The work just moved in the background until the network could breathe again.
3. Security: Open Source, Huginn, DKLS and FROSTSecurity dominated the technical section. The current TSS library is not public yet, but Chad expects it to be open sourced around v3.20, likely after a deeper Soda Labs review. Soda Labs is still spending time with the codebase before the team opens it again, and Chad framed that delay as a tradeoff in favor of better review.
The review surface is not small. Chad said Huginn, his AI audit and triage agent, has opened close to 200 issues against the private TSS library alone, with varying severity. The team is reviewing and prioritizing them, but not every issue necessarily deserves a patch if the long-term plan is to leave GG20.
"Everybody wants to get off of GG20 and move to DKLS." (Chad)That does not mean pressing a panic button. Chad emphasized that changing cryptography is inherently dangerous, especially when live funds have to migrate between schemes. The likely path is slower and more controlled: move chain by chain, start with smaller-value chains if possible, observe keygen and signing behavior, then expand.
The direction is now a dual track. Use FROST where THORChain can, especially EVM chains and Bitcoin through Taproot. Use DKLS where FROST is not available, such as Litecoin and Dogecoin. Monero already uses FROST, but Chad clarified that it is a different variant and cannot simply be reused for EVMs or Bitcoin.
Chainflip came up as one possible FROST implementation to study because it has been in production, but Chad made no commitment. THORChain still needs to evaluate whether any candidate library supports the accountability features the protocol needs, including identifying and slashing participants who hold up keygen or signing.
The team is also exploring bigger vault architecture ideas: hot and cold vaults, less frequent signing for most funds, and possibly two-of-two schemes later. The security team has a deeper meeting next Wednesday. Chad suggested next THORSday may have a clearer readout.
4. The Growth Stack: Wallets, KOLs and AI AgentsThe pause did not freeze business development. Kenton ran through a stack of smaller but important growth items now that trading is live again.
First, Morpheus. THORChain had a call with Morpheus, the decentralized AI project, and the immediate next step is simple: whitelist the ERC20 contract so a liquidity pool can be created. David from Morpheus is expected on the podcast in August. Kenton also floated the broader idea of reaching out to more ERC20 communities that want access to Bitcoin liquidity without asking nodes to support a whole new chain.
Second, wallets and affiliates. Keplr Wallet support on THORChain Swap is expected to start with EVM chains, then UTXO chains. The affiliate page is also being cleaned up so partners can get API keys, set fees, choose payout assets and likely create a THORName up front as part of the onboarding flow.
Third, marketing. Eric from Moca introduced Kenton to Creatorverse, the campaign platform from SCAL3. The pitch is a contest model for KOLs: creators compete on a leaderboard, with payouts tied to performance instead of a flat fee per post. Kenton liked the game theory, while Chad immediately asked the right question: how do they keep bots from gaming likes and retweets?
The AI-agent section was the most forward-looking. After the Morpheus call, Chad listed action items around x402 payments, Ethereum agent standards and an MCP for THORChain. He has built an MCP before and said he may open source it. Andy from Liquify has also been working on MCP tooling.
Kenton had already started checking THORChain's web properties with Agents First, trying to make thorchain.org and THORChain Swap easier for AI systems to read and interact with.
"THORChain has to be easily accessible by AI." (Kenton)The thesis is straightforward: if agents become a major share of blockchain transactions, THORChain cannot be invisible to them.
5. POL Takes Center StageThe biggest governance conversation was protocol-owned liquidity. With trading back and Monero close, Kenton wanted to know when the community should start debating what percentage of system income should go to POL.
The first issue is mechanics. Chad believed the POL percentage had been moved to an operational Mimir, where nodes can vote different percentages and the leading value wins. Boone joined to say his dashboard still shows it as an economic Mimir, with 12 votes trying to set it to 1%. Chad linked the commit he remembered making and said he would need to check whether something had been reverted.
The second issue is economics. Kenton corrected his own math from a previous discussion: if the system moved from 75% of fees going to nodes to 50% going to nodes and 25% going to POL, node operators would need to raise operator fees by 50% to get back to even. His view was that bond providers and operators need to have that conversation honestly, especially in a lower-fee, lower-$RUNE environment.
Boone's argument was urgency. After the exploit, asking third-party LPs to trust the pools immediately is a hard sell. Monero could become one of THORChain's most important pools, but without POL, the liquidity has to come from somewhere else.
"Getting liquidity back into the pools is a really really huge priority." (Boone)That is why the POL debate feels bigger than a simple fee split. Under normal LP incentives, THORChain rents liquidity from third parties and keeps paying for it. Under POL, the protocol slowly owns more of the pools, earns fees on its own liquidity and can target liquidity into strategic pools like $XMR.
"It's renting versus owning." (Boone)Kenton floated 25% POL while keeping the 5% $RUNE burn, or 29% POL with the burn reduced to 1%. Denny preferred going as aggressive as possible, while keeping at least a 1% burn for the deflationary narrative. The hosts also noted that the attack aftermath already left several million $RUNE to burn, far more than the fee-burn mechanism had destroyed so far, though they were careful with the exact number.
The sales pitch for new chains may be even stronger. Instead of paying a centralized exchange listing fee and handing supply to a market maker that sells, a project can seed a THORChain pool, keep custody of its LP position, accept impermanent loss as the real cost, and let POL keep buying and holding its token if the pool earns its way there. That turns THORChain from a listing venue into a long-term liquidity partner.
What to Watchv3.19.2 adoption. Watch for the Solana churn fix, Monero code adoption and node readiness after the release reaches operators.$XMR mainnet. The target moved closer, but shallow liquidity and possible early pauses should be expected. Small swaps first.The security meeting. Next Wednesday's discussion may clarify hot/cold vaults, two-of-two ideas and the first DKLS or FROST migration path.v3.20. Chad expects the public TSS library around v3.20, with $TAO and free stable swaps also discussed for that release path, gated by Mimir where needed.POL governance. The Mimir type needs clarity, then the community has to converge on a percentage. The practical question is how fast THORChain should own liquidity again.AI accessibility. x402, MCP tooling and agent-readable THORChain sites are now explicit action items, not abstract future talk.Upcoming guest. Saturday's episode is expected to feature Amir Taaki for the Monero and cypherpunk crowd.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net
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Coinbase, Kraken, Bittrex, Circle a další spustily Crypto Rating Council, který bude hodnotit kryptoprojekty podle toho, zda mohou být podle amerického práva považovány za cenné papíry. Bitcoin dostal nejnižší skóre 1, zatímco XRP 4.
Some of the most popular companies in the cryptoeconomy have banded together to create an organization that will assess and rate top cryptocurrency projects on the likelihood of these projects being securities per U.S. federal securities laws.
That organization, the Crypto Rating Council (CRC), counts exchange operators like Bittrex, Coinbase, Kraken, and Poloniex-backers Circle among its first members, as well as the firms of Anchorage, DRW Cumberland, Genesis, and Grayscale Investments.
So why the need for such a body?
The so-called Howey Test, which is a test devised by the U.S. Supreme Court to determine if a given asset is a security, commonly leads to “judgment calls, inconsistent results, and … disagreement among legal experts,” the CRC said on the Frequently Asked Questions section of its new website.
Accordingly, the organization’s rating system — which runs from 1 to 5, with 5 indicating an asset bears the hallmarks of a security and 1 meaning the opposite — is being hailed by members as a “compliance tool” that will help bring consistency to their respective asset review processes.
Founded by prominent companies across the crypto industry, our mission is to lead crypto financial services firms committed to practical compliance with the U.S. securities laws. We are the Crypto Rating Council, and we launched today: https://t.co/FbdwfSZN9D
— Crypto Rating Council (@CRC_Crypto) September 30, 2019
“The CRC will publish a simple rating for most assets it reviews to indicate the results of its analysis as a reference for operators, developers, and the public,” the organization said.
With that said, the ratings are utterly non-binding and have been made without involvement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). So, while clarity is the professed goal, the only thing the CRC has ultimately made more clear is what its members think about the legal status of top cryptocurrencies in America.
“The score does not reflect a legal conclusion and is no indication of qualitative value of an asset or suitability for investment or any other purpose,” the CRC said of its ratings.
How the First Scores Look Don’t expect any surprises when it comes to bitcoin (BTC). The oldest cryptocurrency, which has long been held up by various stakeholders as a standard for decentralized projects, received a 1 rating from the CRC.
Other projects the body deemed to have “few or no characteristics consistent with treatment as a security” included DeFi’s darling Dai stablecoin, the popular Monero (XMR) privacy cryptocurrency, and Litecoin (LTC).
The 2 rating was given to the next rung of projects that the CRC deemed to seem mostly decentralized according to its framework. These projects included Ethereum (ETH), Zcash (ZEC), Numeraire (NMR), ChainLink (LINK), and the fledgling proof-of-stake project Algorand (ALGO).
Getting on up there according to the group were projects like Augur (3.75), EOS (3.75), Stellar (3.75), Tezos (3.75), and XRP (4). The highest inaugural scores were given to Polymath (4.5) and Maker (4.5).
Notably, the SEC announced just hours after these ratings were released that Block.one, the team behind the EOS launch, had settled charges and would pay a $24 million civil penalty for its year-long ICO being an unregistered security offering.
The Commission said the securities status only applied to the “IOU” ERC20 token that was issued during the sale rather than the current EOS cryptocurrency, which lives on EOS now rather than Ethereum.
Are Exchanges Listing Securities? One question that immediately started buzzing through the ecosystem on the heels of the announcement of the CRC was why would exchanges like Coinbase take chances on assets like XRP that appear to bear considerable resemblances to a security in the U.S.?
One possibility is that the group’s members consider “security status is binary,” according to Jake Chervinsky, the General Counsel of DeFi lending project Compound Finance. In other words, anything less than a 5 rating would be fair game accordingly.
My best guess: they'd say security status is binary and as a matter of law it doesn't make a difference how close a token comes to being a security if it's ultimately not one.
On that logic, though, query the value of publishing the five-point score in the first place.
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) September 30, 2019
But even if the already rated cryptocurrencies later end up being cleared as “not securities” per the SEC, the CRC rating system can lead to future conflicts of interest, e.g. member exchanges being charitable in their ratings because they stand to gain from trade volume.
In my opinion, this rating system creates a massive conflict of interest. All of the companies that joined this consortium are massively incentivized to rate the vast majority of tokens as non-securities. Coinbase listed some very questionable tokens including XRP, Tezos, EOS
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) September 30, 2019
But there’s a silver lining here, according to Blockchain chief executive officer and president Marco Santori. In a Twitter thread on the CRC announcement, Santori said the effort was suspect in some ways but was also a positive attempt at self-regulation in an industry that needs more regulatory clarity in general.
8/ So why on earth would they publish this? Why on earth should we applaud their effort?
Well, actually we should.
As an industry, this stuff is basically the best we've got.
THAT'S RIGHT ITS A TWIST
wait hear me out.
— Marco Santori (@msantoriESQ) September 30, 2019
William M. Peaster
William M. Peaster is a professional writer and editor who specializes in the Ethereum, Dai, and Bitcoin beats in the cryptoeconomy. He's appeared in Blockonomi, Binance Academy, Bitsonline, and more. He enjoys tracking smart contracts, DAOs, dApps, and the Lightning Network. He's learning Solidity, too! Contact him on Telegram at @wmpeaster
Binance ukončuje obchodování s Monero (XMR), Multichain (MULTI), Vai (VAI) a Aragon (ANT) v rámci pravidelné kontroly. Obchodování skončí 20. února 2024 ve 03:00 UTC, vklady 21. února 2024 a výběry 20. května 2024.
Binance, the world’s leading crypto exchange, has announced the delisting of four digital currencies, including Monero (XMR), Multichain (MULTI), Vai (VAI), and Aragon (ANT). The decision to remove these tokens from the platform comes as part of Binance’s periodic review process.
According to the latest announcement, the delisting process is scheduled to take effect on February 20, 2024, at 03:00 a.m. UTC. Following this, all trading pairs associated with these tokens, including ANT/BTC, ANT/USDT, MULTI/USDT, USDT/VAI, XMR/BNB, XMR/BTC, XMR/ETH, and XMR/USDT, will cease to be available for trading. Additionally, deposits of these tokens will not be credited to user accounts after February 21, 2024. Moreover, withdrawals for these tokens will be not supported after May 20, 2024.
Why Did Binance Decide To Delist Monero, Multichain, Vai & Aragon? Binance’s decision to delist these tokens is guided by a comprehensive assessment of various factors. These include the commitment of the project teams, development activity, trading volume, network stability, public communication, responsiveness to due diligence requests, and contribution to a healthy crypto ecosystem. Any evidence of unethical conduct or negligence also weighs into the decision-making process.
Monero, known for its privacy features, has faced scrutiny from regulatory bodies due to its potential use in illicit activities. While it offers anonymity to users, this very feature has raised concerns among authorities regarding its susceptibility to use in money laundering and other illegal transactions.
Multichain, Vai, and Aragon, while not as widely recognized as Monero, have also failed to meet Binance’s standards in terms of development activity, trading volume, and network stability. The delisting of these tokens underscores the crypto exchange’s commitment to maintaining a trustworthy trading environment for its users.
Also Read: Binance Tops CME In Bitcoin Futures, Is Bitcoin ETF Demand Over?
Implications Of Delisting In addition to the delisting of Monero, Multichain, Vai, and Aragon trading pairs from the spot market, Binance will also remove these pairs from its margin trading platform, futures trading, and various other services. This includes Binance Margin, Binance Futures, Binance Simple Earn, Binance Auto-Invest, Binance Loans, Binance Convert, Binance Gift Card, Binance Pay, and Trading Bots.
Despite the delisting, the CEX ensures that users’ funds are safeguarded. Any remaining balances in delisted tokens will be automatically converted into stablecoins on behalf of users. However, it’s important to note that the conversion is not guaranteed, and users will be notified before the process begins. The stablecoins will then be credited to user accounts after the conversion.
In response to the delisting announcement, users are advised to close any open positions and withdraw their assets in the above-mentioned trading pairs. In addition, they are advised to manage any associated products such as Simple Earn, Auto-Invest, Loans, Margin, Futures, Convert, Gift Cards, Pay, and Trading Bots before the stipulated deadlines to avoid any potential losses.
Also Read: Binance Co-founder Announces $5 Million Reward for Reporting Insider Trading
