Monero (XMR) Price Chart and Market Data

This overview covers the underlying privacy technology, supply issuance metrics, historical funding, exchange availability, and network security events of the asset.

What is Monero (XMR)?

So, Monero actually hit the scene back in April 2014. The whole point was to build something that's truly private. You know how anyone can just look up your Bitcoin history? XMR fixes that by hiding who sent it, who got it, and the exact amounts right from the jump. Funny enough, it actually started life as a fork of Bytecoin. No shady ICOs, no founders keeping a stash for themselves—just a straight-up fair launch aiming to be actual, fungible internet money.

How do the privacy features work under the hood?

It mostly runs on three main pieces of tech working together. First, Ring Signatures mix your transaction in with random decoys already on the blockchain, so nobody knows which one is real. Then you have Stealth Addresses, which spit out a brand-new, one-time destination for whoever is receiving the funds. And to hide the actual money moving? That’s where RingCT comes in. The devs do tinker with it, too. Back in August 2022, for example, they pushed the ring size up to 16 to make the anonymity set even larger.

Are there any Monero total supply limits or tokenomics?

A lot of people don't realize this, but XMR actually doesn't have a hard cap. The main minting phase finished up around May 2022 after putting roughly 18.132 million coins out there. Once that happened, the network shifted into what they call "tail emission." Basically, miners just get a steady 0.6 XMR every two minutes. Forever. It pumps about 157,680 new XMR into the supply each year. It sounds inflationary, but that steady drip keeps miners paid out, and the actual inflation rate sits comfortably below 1% for 2026.

Who backed the Monero coin financially in the early days?

Honestly? Nobody. You aren't going to find any venture capital or big corporate sponsors hiding in the background here. That also means there aren't any massive token unlocks or vesting cliffs waiting to dump on regular buyers. Instead of raising a traditional round, the community uses something called the Crowdfunding System (CCS). If developers want to build a feature, they pitch the idea, and people just voluntarily toss XMR their way. The core guys hold the donations in escrow until the code is actually shipped.

Where can you still track the XMR price and trade today?

Getting your hands on it is admittedly getting a bit tougher lately because of regulators. You can definitely still trade on spots like KuCoin, Kraken, MEXC, HTX, BitMart, and CoinEx. But heavy-handed rules—specifically the EU's MiCA framework—spooked giants like Binance and OKX into dropping it. With centralized exchanges choking off access, most of the real volume is just shifting off-grid. Traders are leaning way more into Tor-based setups like Haveno or just doing trustless atomic swaps to bypass the roadblocks entirely.

Is the network ever vulnerable to 51% attacks?

Yeah, it’s not bulletproof and definitely faces technical headaches. The worst one hit recently, on September 14, 2025. Basically, the Qubic mining pool scooped up over 51% of the network hash rate for a bit, causing an 18-block reorganization. It ended up temporarily invalidating about 118 transactions. Besides that, researchers in early 2026 noticed that something like 14 to 15% of the nodes on the network were acting weird, probably trying to run surveillance to unmask users. The community is still arguing over whether to use DNS Checkpoints to block future reorgs.