On the morning of March 28, the cost of cryptocurrency Monero (XMR), which is a privacy coin, jumped by 51%. As it turned out, the reason was an attempt to launder $330 million in bitcoin.
The well-known online researcher ZachXBT noticed a suspicious transfer of» 3,520 BTC (about $333 million) from a potential victim. Shortly after the transfer, these tokens were exchanged for XMR in a few instant exchangers. According to ZachXBT, it was a theft of bitcoins from an old holder with the address bc1qcrypchnrdx87jnal5e5m849fw460t4gk7vz55g.
Amid these events, the price of Monero increased by 51% to $347.72. Later, the rate partially rolled back, and now XMR costs $255.
Monero is the largest privacy coin, with a market capitalization of $4.7 billion. Unlike public blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, where anyone can view transaction history, Monero uses technology to hide wallet addresses and transfer details. This is why Monero is often chosen by people to hide their transactions.
In 2020, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced a $625,000 reward for hacking Monero’s privacy mechanisms and signed contracts with analytics company Chainalysis and Integra FEC.
Monero and other tokens of this type have been banned or are about to be banned in many EU countries.
In March, about $28.8 million was stolen as a result of hacker attacks. Only $4.8 million was recovered in the 1inch Resolver incident. Phishing accounted for approximately $4.5 million of the total. The data excluded the theft of $32 million from a Coinbase user.
Source: Certik
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