Monero hit an all-time high earlier this week, and crypto sleuth ZachXBT thinks he knows why

Monero’s native token, XMR, hit an all-time high earlier this week, at one point rallying nearly 80% to $797.73 from a recent weekly low around $450, according to The Block’s data.

Onchain sleuth ZachXBT now ascribes this price action, at least a portion of it, to a recent series of swaps following a multi-million crypto theft.

“On January 10, 2026 at around 11 pm UTC a victim lost $282M+ worth of LTC & BTC due to a hardware wallet social engineering scam,” ZachXBT, who last year became a Paradigm advisor, wrote on Friday. “The attacker began converting the stolen LTC & BTC to Monero via multiple instant exchanges causing the XMR price to sharply increase.”

While details of the theft are still largely unknown, ZachXBT pointed to several suspected wallets associated with the alleged robbery.

One wallet (0b4fc3e) appears to be a consolidation address for about $43.7 million worth of bitcoin. This address received the majority of its funds through about 10 high-value transactions totaling between 39–47 BTC, and smaller transfers. Those funds were ultimately sent to an address beginning c3b4ccc, after an intermediate stop at bc1qlux. There’s no clear onchain evidence that these particular funds have been swapped to Monero, a popular privacy chain.

Another suspected address (bc1qpsmh) received over 1108 BTC, worth about $105 million, which was then split three times in two 35 BTC sends and 928 BTC send. The three recipient addresses have continued to break down the funds, further complicating the web of transactions. An additional 2.05 million LTC also appear to have been moved following a similar modus operandi.

None of the flagged addresses have been publicly labeled on common explorers, and it is possible these are just simple wallet-to-wallet transfers for common address rotation. The Block has reached out to ZachXBT for additional information.

ZachXBT notes that the stolen assets were also sent to Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin via Thorchain. The suspected transfer largely happened in the days after the alleged theft, coinciding with Monero’s all-time high on Jan. 14.

Privacy in the spotlight

Monero has been gaining alongside other leading blockchain privacy projects, like Zcash, beginning late last year. Many major industry participants, from the nonprofit Ethereum Foundation to the largest asset manager BlackRock, have noted that privacy ought to be an embedded, core property of blockchains.

Although some regions, including Dubai, have recently moved to limit privacy coins, there are a host of projects pushing forward the idea of “pragmatic privacy” that offers a balance between user autonomy and regulatory needs.

XMR is currently trading at $647, down about 9.7% on the day, making it the worst-performing asset within the top 50 coins by market cap on a day where bitcoin is largely flat, according to The Block’s price page.