XMR Price Reaches $500 for the First Time Since 2021 After Zcash Falls

Key takeaways:

Monero (XMR) surged past the $500 mark for the first time since its peak in May 2021.

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency briefly touched $500.66 after rising more than 6% on Sunday and 20% over the past week. That brought it closer to its record high of around $517.50, established in April 2021.

Zcash fiasco stirs XMR price rally

Monero’s ascent contrasted sharply with the turmoil engulfing its privacy coin rival, Zcash (ZEC).

On Wednesday, the Electric Coin Company (ECC) team behind Zcash resigned en masse, citing intolerable working conditions and board disputes over the project’s assets and direction.

The fallout exposed deep rifts in Zcash’s leadership, particularly involving the Bootstrap Project and funding allocations. ZEC’s price plummeted by over 20% days after the mass resignation, reaching a weekly low of around $360 over the weekend.

Monero also drew support from a wave of bullish institutional commentary.

In their latest reports, firms such as Grayscale and Coinbase highlighted privacy coins as a key growth theme, citing rising demand for financial confidentiality in an increasingly regulated crypto landscape.

Related: Crypto privacy in 2026: Compliance-friendly tools take center stage

With Zcash in flux, traders appeared to favor Monero as the cleaner privacy exposure.

Monero fractal indicates rally won’t last

As of January, XMR was on the cusp of price discovery while eyeing a breakout above its record high of around $517.50.

Similar breakout attempts occurred seven times in the past, each failing and followed by sharp corrections, ranging from roughly 40% to as much as 95%, toward an ascending trendline support.

XMR will risk entering a prolonged correction phase if history repeats, taking its price toward $200-270, an area aligning with the lower trendline support and prevailing Fibonacci retracement lines.

Conversely, a sustained breakout above the $500–$520 resistance would invalidate the bearish fractal.

In that scenario, XMR could follow the path of cryptocurrencies that broke out after multi-year consolidations in 2025, opening the door for a rally toward $775, a Fibonacci retracement line, and a new all-time high this year.

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