Monero prices rocket to $438 amid $120 million onchain laundering maze

As an analyst, I’ve been tracking some unusual activity this week. We saw roughly $120 million worth of stablecoins moved through a series of decentralized exchanges. What really caught my attention, though, was the coinciding spike in Monero’s price – it essentially highlighted this movement, making it visible on the blockchain.

Crypto researcher ZachXBT reported Friday that a digital address on the Tron blockchain received 120.2 million USDT on Thursday. USDT is a popular stablecoin – a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a value of $1 – and Tron is a blockchain known for its low-cost transactions.

The entity then began splitting the money up and sending it in different directions.

A portion of the funds was converted into Monero (XMR), a cryptocurrency focused on privacy that obscures sender and receiver identities, making transactions difficult to track. These purchases were substantial enough to impact the market, causing Monero’s price to jump from around $330 to $420, according to ZachXBT.

On Friday, the cryptocurrency reached a high of around $438 before settling at $382, an increase of approximately 8% for the day. Because Monero isn’t traded very often, even a large single purchase can quickly cause its price to fluctuate.

In my research, I found that the remaining funds were dispersed in a couple of key ways. I was able to trace over $12 million to deposit addresses on the KuCoin exchange, and around $8 million went to instant swap services – these are platforms that let you quickly exchange one cryptocurrency for another, often without needing to verify your identity.

Using a tool called Near Intents, another $8 million in cryptocurrency was transferred from the Tron network to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Diversifying funds across different cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and blockchains is a typical strategy for obscuring the origin of the money.

Tether then intervened, and ZachXBT reported they blocked an address connected to the group possessing 72 million USDT. This freeze prevents the tokens from being transferred or converted to other currencies.

The original source of the $120 million is unknown. However, the way the money was moved – quickly into a privacy coin, with instant exchanges and transfers across different blockchains – is typical of money laundering. Tether freezing the funds likely indicates they came to the same conclusion.