On 6 October 2025 Bitcoin closed at $124,659, its highest daily close ever. By 29 September 2026 it had lost a third and stood at $83,664. Over the same period Monero rose from $310 to $542, a gain of 75 percent.
Anyone who sees that asks two things. What is this coin? And does it belong in a portfolio as a counterweight to Bitcoin? This piece goes through both in order: what Monero does, who uses it, how new coins are created, and how the price has actually behaved against Bitcoin.
Monero is digital cash that nobody can look into
Monero launched on 18 April 2014 as a fork of Bytecoin, with no coins created in advance for its founders. Technically it works like Bitcoin: miners bundle transactions into blocks, one every two minutes on Monero. The difference lies in what the chain shows.
On Bitcoin every payment is public, with sender, receiver and amount. Monero hides all three, in every transaction. Ring signatures mix the real sender in with others, one-time addresses hide the receiver, and a method called RingCT hides the amount. There is no public mode.
On Monero, privacy is not a setting you choose. It is the only one.
What else separates Monero from Bitcoin sits in the mining.
Any computer can mine Monero, and computing power can be rented
Monero uses a mining algorithm called RandomX. According to the project, it is built so that specialised chips do not pay off and ordinary processors can keep up. That spreads mining across many machines. It also makes computing power easy to rent.
That is exactly what the Qubic project did in 2025. It had its miners mine Monero and used the proceeds to buy back its own token. According to The Block, its share of the network's computing power grew from under 2 percent in May to over 27 percent in July. In August Qubic rewrote 6 blocks of the chain, on 14 September 18 blocks. 118 transactions that had already been confirmed became invalid.
18 blocks are 36 minutes. For that long a payment could count as confirmed and still disappear.
In August 2025 Qubic spoke of a "51% takeover". An analysis by Lee and Kim (arXiv, December 2025) found no lasting majority and no revenue advantage for Qubic. On 1 April 2026 Qubic announced it would replace Monero entirely with Dogecoin. That cannot be checked independently, because Monero pools do not have to disclose their miners. The network's computing power stood at about 5.7 gigahashes per second on 30 September.
The price reacted in two different ways. In August 2025 XMR fell 14.6 percent while Bitcoin fell only 6.5 percent. In September, the month of the larger attack, XMR rose 13.0 percent and Bitcoin 5.4 percent. The market punished the first attack and ignored the second.
Open to anyone, on Monero, also means open to anyone who buys enough computing power.
Who uses a chain whose payments nobody can see?
The chain hides what happens on it, and trading runs mostly through one exchange
According to Blockchair, 27,001 transactions ran over Monero on 25 September 2026. On the same date in previous years the count was 14,288 (2022), 18,690 (2023), 33,083 (2024) and 30,037 (2025). A transaction cost about 2.5 cents at the median.
What for cannot be measured. The chain hides exactly that. There are fragments. According to TRM Labs (February 2026), 48 percent of newly launched darknet markets accepted only Monero. That counts launches, not turnover. Chainalysis saw more Bitcoin flowing into darknet markets after the exchange delistings, not less (CoinDesk, March 2025). On the decentralised exchange Haveno, the 30 days to 25 September saw 436 trades against Bitcoin, 379 against euros and 203 against dollars.
Where XMR trades is clearer. The large exchanges have stepped back one by one: Kraken in 2021 for customers in the UK, Binance in February 2024, Kraken in October 2024 in the European Economic Area and in June 2026 in the United Arab Emirates. On 30 September, CoinGecko showed the last 24 hours of spot volume split like this:
| Exchange | Share of spot volume |
|---|---|
| KuCoin | 58.1 % |
| HTX | 14.6 % |
| Poloniex | 7.0 % |
| Kraken | 6.2 % |
| Bitfinex | 5.3 % |
| WhiteBIT | 4.5 % |
More than half of all spot trading runs through a single exchange.
In 2024 Binance only ended spot trading. Its XMR perpetual, a futures contract with no expiry date, has traded there without interruption since 2020. In the 30 days to 29 September it turned over $1.97 billion, almost twice the KuCoin spot market at $1.03 billion.
On the day of the Binance announcement, 6 February 2024, XMR fell 36 percent. Since the last spot trading day on 20 February 2024 it has risen 337 percent, Bitcoin 60 percent.
The delistings made Monero harder to reach. They did not do lasting damage to the price.
How many coins are added each year, and who holds them?
Monero creates new coins forever, currently as many as Bitcoin
On 30 September 2026 there were 18,811,360 XMR according to Blockchair. The initial emission is over. Since 9 June 2022 every block creates a fixed 0.6 XMR, forever. This is called tail emission.
Per year that is 157,680 XMR, 0.84 percent of the supply. Since the April 2024 halving Bitcoin creates 3.125 BTC per block, about 164,250 a year. With 20,091,477 BTC in existence that is 0.82 percent.
| new coins per year | share of supply | |
|---|---|---|
| Monero | 157,680 XMR | 0.84 % |
| Bitcoin (until the 2028 halving) | 164,250 BTC | 0.82 % |
| Bitcoin (after the 2028 halving) | 82,125 BTC | about 0.4 % |
Today both coins dilute at almost the same speed. After the next Bitcoin halving in 2028, Monero's supply grows twice as fast. Monero's rate falls only slowly, because the supply keeps growing: to about 0.81 percent by 2030.
There are no unlocks, foundation reserves or investor tranches. The Arena snapshot shows the entire XMR supply as circulating. Who holds how much, nobody knows. A list of the largest addresses, as it exists for Bitcoin, cannot be built for Monero.
Monero has no unlocks to fear. It also offers no way to see who is selling.
That leaves the question this piece started with: how does the price behave against Bitcoin?
For two years Monero went its own way. In 2026 it moves with Bitcoin again
Monthly returns in US dollars, Binance until December 2023 and KuCoin after that, April 2019 to August 2026, 89 completed months. Correlation measures how closely the two move month by month: 1 means in lockstep, 0 means no relationship, a negative value means opposite directions.
| 04/2019–12/2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (Jan–Aug) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Months | 57 | 12 | 12 | 8 |
| Correlation of monthly returns | 0.67 | −0.32 | 0.29 | 0.91 |
| Months in which BTC fell | 26 | 4 | 6 | 4 |
| … of which XMR did better than BTC | 14 | 4 | 5 | 3 |
| … of which XMR itself fell | 22 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| Return XMR / BTC | +194 / +930 % | +17 / +121 % | +124 / −6 % | +20 / −10 % |
Until the end of 2023 Monero moved with Bitcoin and fell far behind it. In 2024 it moved against Bitcoin, in 2025 almost independently. In 2026 it is tied more closely to Bitcoin than on average from 2019 to 2023.
Across all 89 months, Bitcoin fell in 40. In 26 of those Monero fell less or rose, but in 30 it was itself in the red. When Bitcoin falls, Monero usually falls less far. It still falls.
The two worst Bitcoin months of the year show what that means. In February Bitcoin fell 14.9 percent and Monero 27.7 percent. In June Bitcoin fell 20.4 percent and Monero 17.4 percent. In June the cushion was three percentage points, in February there was none.
February had a prelude. On 14 January 2026 XMR closed at $710.57, the highest close in its KuCoin history. The Arena flags a parabolic run for those days: the price was more than twice its 200-day average and had risen by more than half within 30 days. 22 days later, on 5 February, XMR stood at $292.79, 58.8 percent lower. Over the same days Bitcoin lost 35.1 percent.
Over the whole stretch, one dollar in XMR in April 2019 became $9.31 by the end of August 2026, one dollar in Bitcoin $19.15.
| Year | XMR | BTC |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 (from April) | −20.3 % | +75.3 % |
| 2020 | +249.6 % | +302.0 % |
| 2021 | +46.4 % | +59.8 % |
| 2022 | −35.6 % | −64.2 % |
| 2023 | +11.9 % | +155.6 % |
| 2024 | +17.4 % | +121.3 % |
| 2025 | +124.1 % | −6.3 % |
| 2026 (to Aug) | +20.3 % | −10.3 % |
The same holds in every one of these years: when Bitcoin rose, Monero trailed it. When Bitcoin fell, Monero was ahead. A gain while Bitcoin fell happened in 2025 and 2026. Without August, a month in which both rose, XMR would stand at about −17 percent for 2026.
Two good years against Bitcoin do not make a counterweight.
Claims about Monero, checked
| Claim | Who, when | What the data says | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binance delists all XMR pairs | Binance, 6 February 2024 | Spot, margin and coin-margined futures ended; the USDⓈ-M perpetual XMRUSDT still trades ($1.97bn in 30 days) | partly holds |
| "Huobi has delisted" | TRM Labs, February 2026 | HTX, formerly Huobi, carries 14.6 % of spot volume on 30 Sep 2026 | does not hold today |
| 73 exchanges delisted XMR in 2025 | TRM Labs, February 2026, cited by ainvest | no list published | cannot be checked |
| "51% takeover complete" | Qubic, August 2025 | rewrites of 6 and 18 blocks documented; no lasting majority according to Lee and Kim | partly holds |
| Qubic replaces Monero entirely with Dogecoin | Qubic, 1 April 2026 | own press release without an end date; pool shares not disclosed | cannot be checked |
| FCMP++ has been live since January 2026 | several swap sites | the project names no date for the fork; the current release does not include it | does not hold |
| XMR trades on THORChain | reports from May 2026 | XMR code since release v3.20.0 (19 Aug 2026), pool status not retrievable | partly holds |
| Haveno trades $5–10m a day | Baltex, 2026 | 1,018 trades in 30 days, volume not public | cannot be checked |
The pattern: those who want to hurt Monero overstate the delistings. Those who want to sell Monero overstate the technology.
The obvious objection
"Monero rose 124 percent in 2025 while Bitcoin fell. That is exactly what I want in my portfolio."
On a yearly view the picture holds: in every year in which Bitcoin fell, Monero did better. Inside those years it looks different. In 2026 XMR fell in both large Bitcoin drops, in February by almost twice as much. Anyone who had to sell in February got nothing from the annual result. Eight months is not much. Even so, a correlation of 0.91 is not a counterweight. A counterweight that only pushes back in some years does not protect anything.
Is XMR a good investment? That depends on what you want it for
If you are looking for protection against Bitcoin drops: the 2026 data does not provide it. XMR fell in three of four months in which Bitcoin fell, once by more than Bitcoin.
If you are betting on its own demand for private money: that demand existed in 2024 and 2025, and it carried the price against the market. Along with it you buy a spot market that depends on one exchange for 58 percent of its volume, and a list of exchanges that have been stepping back since 2021.
If supply is what interests you: today Monero grows as fast as Bitcoin, from 2028 twice as fast, and permanently so. There are no unlocks.
If security is what interests you: in 2025 the chain could be rewritten by 18 blocks with rented computing power. For large payments that means waiting for more confirmations than you would on Bitcoin.
Buying Monero does not buy protection from Bitcoin. It buys a separate bet with its own risks.
Four numbers show whether the picture changes: the monthly correlation with Bitcoin (0.91 so far in 2026), KuCoin's share of spot trading (58 percent), the network's computing power (5.7 gigahashes per second) and a date for FCMP++. What remains open is whether the decoupling of 2024 and 2025 returns or was a phase. The next months in which Bitcoin falls will show it.
FAQ
How are the monthly returns calculated? Month-end close against the previous month-end close, XMR and BTC each against USDT, without fees. XMR comes from Binance until December 2023 and from KuCoin from January 2024, because Binance ended spot trading in February 2024. At the seam the two exchanges differ by $0.06. September 2026 is still running and is left out of all comparisons.
Why is the all-time high $710.57? I read $797. $710.57 is the highest daily close on KuCoin (14 January 2026). CoinGecko gives $797.73 as the intraday high across several exchanges.
Has Qubic stopped mining Monero? It has announced it (press release of 1 April 2026: "Monero is being replaced by DOGE, not added alongside it"). Qubic names no end date, and the shares of individual pools in Monero mining cannot be publicly verified.
What is FCMP++? A planned upgrade that hides the sender in the entire transaction history instead of in a group of 16 possible senders. It runs on a test network; no date for its launch has been set.
All XMR monthly returns in US dollars
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 11.6 | 49.1 | −4.9 | −9.3 | −16.3 | −15.6 | 3.8 | −7.0 | −18.5 | |||
| 2020 | 61.5 | −8.6 | −27.8 | 30.8 | 4.3 | −2.2 | 33.2 | 10.1 | 16.6 | 16.5 | 3.3 | 19.6 |
| 2021 | −11.8 | 59.1 | 12.1 | 71.6 | −35.5 | −18.1 | 7.5 | 19.2 | −12.1 | 9.5 | −13.4 | −3.9 |
| 2022 | −35.7 | 15.8 | 24.8 | 0.7 | −7.2 | −43.1 | 36.9 | −3.6 | −1.3 | 1.5 | −4.9 | 3.6 |
| 2023 | 20.5 | −15.3 | 4.9 | −1.4 | −6.1 | 15.4 | −4.3 | −11.2 | 2.4 | 17.5 | −1.3 | −2.9 |
| 2024 | −0.8 | −15.7 | −7.1 | −6.8 | 24.2 | 13.5 | −6.3 | 7.0 | −8.5 | 0.8 | 4.2 | 19.4 |
| 2025 | 23.2 | −8.6 | −1.4 | 29.6 | 16.7 | 0.1 | −5.9 | −14.6 | 13.0 | 13.3 | 30.9 | −1.0 |
| 2026 | 7.3 | −27.7 | −0.5 | 13.5 | −3.1 | −17.4 | 18.0 | 45.5 | 3.9* |
Figures in percent. *September 2026 to 29 Sep, month not complete.
Not investment advice, not a recommendation, not a forecast — historical patterns are no guarantee.
Study the Past — Improve your Future 🥋