Monero Price Surge Likely Attributable to Large Hack: ZachXBT

On-chain researcher ZachXBT may have determined why privacy coin Monero (XMR) surged as much as 40% early Monday: Someone probably got hacked.

ZachXBT reported that 3,520 bitcoin (BTC) ($330.7 million) was drained from an address and then swapped for XMR.

Market data shows a spike in volatility coming from an excess in buy orders for the XMR-BTC order book.

Market observers initially had a hard time determining what caused the major spike as metrics such as active wallets and network activity hadn’t risen accordingly.

Liquidity for XMR has been limited during the past few months as major exchanges delisted the privacy token in a bid to fight dark net markets. The lack of liquidity would have made any sizeable buy a catalyst for outsized pricing gains. CoinGecko data shows that the order depth for XMR is significantly smaller than for tokens of similar market cap.

XMR is trading for over $300 according to CoinDesk markets data.