Monero still operates after a broad exchange retreat
Monero (XMR) remains one of the few major crypto assets where every transaction is private by default. Unlike Zcash, which allows shielded transfers as an option, Monero does not offer a transparent mode. Sender, receiver, and amount are hidden in every transfer.
That design has imposed a visible cost. The article says about 73 exchanges removed XMR in 2025 alone, including Coinbase and Bitstamp. The wave started earlier: OKX delisted XMR pairs in January 2024, Binance removed it globally in February 2024, and Kraken first delisted it in Ireland and Belgium in mid-2024 before expanding that move across the European Economic Area in October 2024. Huobi had already begun phasing out privacy coins in September 2022.
Monero launched in April 2014 as a fork of the earlier Bytecoin project, created by a small group of developers, most of whom chose to remain anonymous. There is no company behind it, no board, and no CEO. Development has long depended on volunteer contributors and public funding, which makes its continued survival notable even inside crypto.
According to the article, XMR is trading at about $410 with a market capitalization of about $7.7 billion, ranking 13th among crypto assets. Its valuation is close to Zcash. In 2025, XMR rose more than 126% and reached an all-time high near $800 in January 2026. More than a year later, the market has been much weaker, and the token is now down about 50% from that peak.
How Monero’s privacy stack works
Monero’s privacy model comes from three mechanisms applied to every transaction, not from a single feature.
- Ring signatures: a real transaction input is mixed with 15 decoy inputs drawn from the blockchain, making it difficult for outside observers to identify which one is the true spender.
- Stealth addresses: each incoming payment uses a fresh one-time address, so repeated payments cannot be directly linked on-chain even if the same public address is shared with multiple people.
- RingCT: cryptographic commitments hide transaction amounts while still letting the network verify that no coins were created out of thin air.
These three parts work together. In Monero, users cannot switch off one layer and fall back to a transparent version of the chain. That is the core difference between Monero’s mandatory privacy model and a system built around optional shielding.
The article also notes a real weakness in ring signatures. A ring of 16 possible spenders is much stronger than no cover at all, but years of sophisticated chain analysis have found ways to narrow the likely real input more often than a pure 1-in-16 guess would suggest.
FCMP++ replaced ring signatures in January 2026
Monero’s answer was FCMP++, activated across the network in January 2026. The upgrade replaced ring signatures with full-chain membership proofs.
Instead of proving that an input belongs to one of 16 possible spenders, FCMP++ proves that the input belongs somewhere in the full history of the chain without revealing where. The article says the anonymity set now spans more than 150 million historical outputs. In effect, the set moved from a small ring to almost the full blockchain. At the same time, the proofs remained compact at roughly 3-4 KB each.
The piece describes FCMP++ as Monero’s largest privacy upgrade to date and presents it as a major expansion of the network’s anonymity guarantees.
RandomX and the mining design
Monero also tries to defend decentralization at the mining layer. Its proof-of-work algorithm, RandomX, is tuned to run efficiently on standard computer CPUs. The goal is to resist specialized mining hardware that can concentrate hash power in a small number of large operations, a pattern often seen on other proof-of-work networks.
That choice fits the broader design philosophy described in the article: privacy at the transaction layer, and a more open participation model at the network layer.
Why regulated exchanges keep removing XMR
The report argues that delistings are not just a matter of regulators disliking privacy coins in general. The issue is that compliance frameworks are difficult to reconcile with a system where every transaction is hidden by design. It points to the European Union’s MiCA framework and similar rules in other jurisdictions, along with FATF travel rule obligations that require platforms to monitor who is sending funds to whom once certain thresholds are crossed.
For Monero, there is no transparent fallback. That leaves regulated exchanges with little room if they need transaction visibility for compliance.
The article draws a line between exchange decisions and outright government bans. It says holding Monero remains legal in many places, including the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The removals were described as compliance choices by exchanges rather than state bans on the asset itself.
Even so, use did not collapse. The report says peer-to-peer and decentralized trading volumes have remained firm, helping Monero continue operating after access through large centralized venues narrowed.
Tracking claims have not broken Monero’s cryptography
Attempts to trace Monero are not new. Since 2020, CipherTrace has publicly marketed what it called enhanced Monero tracing capabilities to government agencies. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, has paid more than $1 million in total to companies including Chainalysis and Integra FEC to build Monero attribution tools.
But the article makes a distinction between attribution and cryptographic breakage. Those systems are described as probabilistic models built from exchange records, IP metadata, and wallet seizures. They are not methods for decrypting Monero’s on-chain data. No analytics company has published a process that actually breaks Monero’s underlying cryptography, and an IRS bounty announced in 2020 for fully cracking Monero was never fully claimed.
No company, no foundation, and funding through CCS
Monero’s governance and development structure is unusually loose. There is no entity comparable to Electric Coin Co. or ZODL, no corporate payroll, no venture backing, and no token sale supporting ongoing engineering work. Instead, much of the work is financed through the Community Crowdfunding System, or CCS.
CCS functions as a public forum where anyone can propose work and the community can fund it directly in XMR. The article says CCS raised about $925,000 in 2025 alone. That money went to areas such as wallet development and network privacy research. Funds are held in escrow and released only after work is delivered.
This structure comes with tradeoffs. Without a single organization at the center, there is no obvious target for subpoenas, pressure, or internal governance fights. But when problems emerge, there is also no company that can move quickly and coordinate a response on its own. Decisions and funding move at the speed of community consensus.
The Qubic episode tested that model in 2025
The article says that tradeoff was stress-tested in 2025. A mining pool called Qubic, linked to former IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo, grew to about one-quarter of Monero’s total hash power by mid-2025. In August, it publicly claimed majority control.
With no company or foundation organizing an emergency response, Monero miners acted on their own and informally boycotted the pool. Its share fell back within about a month. The report says no funds were stolen and no comparable loss event occurred.
Market reaction was also part of the story. XMR fell after the initial announcement, then recovered after the reorganization ended without losses. The author presents that rebound as a sign that the ecosystem still trusted Monero’s commitments.
Monero and Zcash are making different bets
The article closes by framing Monero and Zcash as two distinct approaches to privacy coins. Monero is betting on mandatory privacy, minimal compromise, and a governance model without a company at the center. Zcash is taking the optional route, which leaves it more compatible with exchanges and regulators.
On the article’s telling, Monero remains the stricter technical privacy choice, and the January FCMP++ upgrade pushed that position even further. But the practical burden is heavier in 2026: XMR is about 50% below its January high, the decentralized mining model has already been tested by the Qubic episode, and the exchange delisting trend shows no sign of reversing.
Zcash, by contrast, is presented as the more pragmatic path. The article does not declare a winner. It leaves the question open: can Monero’s technical edge offset its shrinking accessibility, or will Zcash’s more accommodating design prove more durable over time?