Monero’s Wild Ride: Privacy Coins Party After Courtroom Drama 🎉

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Monero, that enigmatic darling of the crypto world, has been on a tear lately, prancing about like a debutante at her first ball. For three consecutive days, its price has been flirting with levels not seen since April 2022, leaving Bitcoin and Ethereum looking like wallflowers at the dance. 🕺

Monero (XMR), the undisputed heavyweight of privacy coins, has soared to a dizzying $216.3, a staggering 110% leap from its 2024 nadir. Over the past year, it’s been outshining its more famous cousins, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), like a precocious child stealing the spotlight at a family reunion. 🏆

The catalyst for this Monero mania? A recent U.S. court ruling involving Tornado Cash (TORN), which has sent privacy coins into a frenzy. In late 2024, a judge ruled that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had rather embarrassingly bungled its sanctions on the company. 🎭

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that smart contracts, those autonomous digital minions, cannot be classified as “property” as the government had argued. The judge noted that Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts were neither owned nor controlled, making them about as subject to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as a cat is to a leash. 🐱

The Treasury Department had claimed that Tornado Cash was a security threat, aiding nefarious groups like the Lazarus Group in laundering billions. But the court wasn’t buying it, and the sanctions were lifted, much to the delight of privacy coin enthusiasts. 🎉

Monero and its ilk surged as the market cheered this development. These tokens, with their advanced security features that make transactions as anonymous as a masked ball, have been under the microscope of authorities. This scrutiny has led to many exchanges delisting them, with big names like Binance, Kraken, OKX, Coinbase, and HTX showing Monero the door. Most of its trading now happens on smaller exchanges like MEX, KuCoin, and Bitfinex. 🚪

But with the Tornado Cash ruling, some of these exchanges might reconsider and re-list Monero and other privacy tokens. This explains why coins like Dash (DASH), Zcash (ZEC), and Horizen (ZEN) have also been on the rise. 📈

From a technical standpoint, Monero’s weekly chart shows a slow but steady uptrend over the past few months, climbing from a low of $102 in February last year to $215. The coin has remained firmly above the 50-week Exponential Moving Average, a sign that the bulls are in control. Monero has also formed an ascending channel and a small doji candlestick, with oscillators like the Stochastic RSI and Momentum pointing upwards. 📊

All signs suggest that Monero’s price will continue its upward trajectory in the coming weeks. A break above the upper side of the ascending channel could see it reach $290, the highest swing since April 2022. 🚀

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2025-03-22 17:38