Monero (XMR) price hits a new all-time high. Why is the privacy coin sector experiencing a collective surge?

The recent cryptocurrency market has shown a significant divergence, with Bitcoin maintaining a range-bound oscillation while the privacy coin sector has experienced explosive growth. On January 13, 2026, Monero (XMR) price reached $644.39, with a daily increase of 10.44%, touching a high of $646.85. This not only set a new all-time high for XMR but also drove the entire privacy coin sector upward.

Market Performance

The privacy coin market has recently exhibited notable capital rotation. The most striking phenomenon is the ebb and flow between Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR). The Electric Coin Company team, the core developers of Zcash, collectively resigned, directly causing ZEC’s price to drop approximately 15%-16% in a single day. Meanwhile, capital did not exit the privacy sector but quickly flowed into Monero.

The Chaikin money flow indicator clearly shows that XMR’s capital inflow is rapidly increasing, while ZEC is experiencing a net outflow. During the phase when ZEC declined about 16%, XMR instead rose about 5%, leading to an expanding market cap gap between the two.

Technical Breakthroughs

Since mid-January 2026, Monero has achieved over 30% short-term gains, setting new historical highs, with market capitalization surpassing $10 billion for the first time.

From a technical analysis perspective, after XMR strongly broke through the long-term resistance at $515, the retracement was limited, with continuous buying support, maintaining a bullish market structure. On the daily chart, buying and selling forces are in a neutral to slightly bullish zone. The MACD and medium- to long-term moving averages have been trending upward since early 2026, reflecting ample trend momentum.

Experienced traders compare XMR’s price movement with historical silver charts, noting that both experienced double-top structures on monthly and quarterly levels. Silver once broke through its descending trendline and experienced a large single-candle rally, known as a “god candle,” which further reinforces market expectations for Monero’s continued upward trajectory.

Core Driving Factors

Under the backdrop of increasingly strict global compliance scrutiny, cases of freezing stablecoins and traceable assets have become frequent, prompting some capital to reassess the importance of privacy protection. In a geopolitical tense environment with highly transparent on-chain capital flows, Monero, with its strong privacy features, has gained more attention.

Industry analysis indicates that Monero offers higher decentralization compared to other privacy coins, with more mature privacy mechanisms, and has not experienced governance crises among core developers for a long time. Although XMR’s market cap share has risen to a high level since 2023, it remains relatively low. This “new high in price, still low in market share” characteristic suggests that capital has not fully flowed in yet, leaving room for rotation from other altcoins into Monero. Privacy itself is becoming one of the most critical competitive advantages in blockchain.

Gate Platform Market Data

According to Gate data, as of January 13, 2026, the latest XMR price is $644.39. Within 24 hours, XMR reached a high of $646.85 and a low of $430.96, with significant volatility. The 24-hour trading volume hit $497 million, indicating a substantial increase in market activity. The current market cap of XMR is approximately $11.887 billion, up $1.123 billion from the previous day.

Monero is a decentralized cryptocurrency focused on privacy protection, dedicated to safeguarding users’ financial privacy and security. It employs ring signatures, stealth addresses, and ring confidential transactions to ensure transaction traceability is impossible. Compared to other optional privacy cryptocurrencies, Monero’s privacy features are enabled by default, with each transaction automatically protecting the sender, receiver, and transaction amount.

Future Market Outlook

Analyst Kevin Svenson pointed out that Monero has built a parabola-like upward trend lasting nearly two years, and the current price is gradually approaching the historical high region. He predicts that if this structure remains intact, Monero could enter a new upward phase around July 2026. Fundamentally, Monero’s active development provides support for its price movement. Data from blockchain analytics firm Santiment shows that Monero recorded multiple significant development events on GitHub over the past 30 days, ranking sixth among privacy coin projects in terms of development activity.

Ongoing code updates and protocol maintenance reflect the project team’s commitment to long-term development. For blockchain networks emphasizing security and privacy, development activity is an important indicator of project health.

In the privacy coin sector, well-known investment firm a16z Crypto pointed out in its 2026 privacy sector analysis that privacy will become the most critical moat in the current year’s cryptocurrency space, a key element that existing blockchains generally lack. They believe that privacy will create a chain-locking effect, generating network effects. Once information is privatized, migrating users from one chain to another will become more difficult, giving privacy-enabled blockchains a stronger competitive edge.

As of January 13, Monero’s 24-hour trading volume has approached $500 million, with a market cap increase of over $1.1 billion, and market enthusiasm continues. The rotation within the privacy coin sector is reflected not only in capital flows but also in the market’s reassessment of decentralization and governance structures. As global financial activities accelerate on-chain, user demand for privacy protection is also increasing. Unlike traditional financial systems, blockchain’s transparency creates inherent privacy shortcomings. Meanwhile, regulatory changes pose new challenges for privacy coins. The EU’s new Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), effective from July 2027, will prohibit tokens with enhanced anonymity and anonymous crypto accounts. This policy change has already influenced major European exchanges’ attitudes toward privacy coins like Monero.