Monero Shoots Up 10% as Crypto Market Wakes Up From Slump

All of the top ten coins by market cap, minus XRP, increased in price today. And privacy coin Monero, the fifteenth largest coin by market cap, increased by 10% in a sudden spurt. 

Bitcoin’s price, the bellwether of the crypto market, is up by 3% in the past 24 hours. Its current price is $18,477.

Though Bitcoin is up today, it’s down more than 3% over the past seven days. That’s a drop from just a few weeks ago, when the bull run was in full swing; on November 30, Bitcoin beat its previous all-time high of $19,783.

Bitcoin's stagnation has affected the price of altcoins like XRP, Litecoin, Cardano, and Stellar. 

XRP is currently valued at $0.50, down 8.4% today and almost 14% this week; Litecoin is up 4% today to $75.11, but it’s fallen over 10% over the past seven days. Cardano also fell by 10%, to $0.14, as did Stellar, now priced at $0.15.

Monero, though, is up 10% for the week, and nearly 9% today alone. Monero is a privacy coin designed to obscure transactions. Some illegal darknet markets deal exclusively in the coin. 

However, its privacy is disputed; blockchain investigation firm CipherTrace offers tools to trace transactions and the US Internal Revenue hired another blockchain investigation firm, Chainalysis, to do the same. 

But for today, traders don't appear to mind.