Monero gains 8.1 percent to $592 while Zcash falls 3.7 percent: outperforming the market

Monero costs around $592 on October 18, a good 8 percent above yesterday's level. What makes the day stand out is not the number on its own: while Monero gains, Zcash loses 3.7 percent, Dash is flat and Bitcoin and Ether slip slightly. The privacy coins that traded as one block for weeks are coming apart, and for holders in Germany more hangs on that than a single day's balance, because access to XMR at regulated venues is narrowing at the same time.

A privacy coin is a cryptocurrency that hides the sender, the recipient and the amount of a payment by default, instead of writing them openly into the blockchain as Bitcoin does. Monero has done this by default for years; Zcash offers it as an option. That technical difference is the lever European supervisors are pulling.

Monero at $592: the gap to Zcash in numbers

According to CoinGecko data, Monero stands at $592.46, up 8.14 percent within 24 hours. Over a week that is a gain of 10.48 percent, over 30 days 3.76 percent. Zcash sits at $1,084.23, 3.70 percent lower than the day before, down 13.86 percent over the week and 26.99 percent over the month. Dash, the third name the market likes to file in the same drawer, is down 18.53 percent over the month.

The comparison with the wider market looks similar. Bitcoin trades just under $81,000 and is down 3.33 percent over the week, Ether at $2,364 with minus 6.69 percent over seven days. Monero is the only one of the three well-known privacy names in positive territory on the day, and it manages that against a market that is giving ground.

One figure puts the proportions in place: Monero reaches a market value of $11.15 billion, which puts it 13th, while Zcash stands at $18.41 billion and 10th. Despite the weaker month, Zcash is therefore the larger asset; Monero's higher unit price says nothing about that. On trading volume the picture reverses: roughly $195 million changed hands in Monero within a day, against roughly $668 million in Zcash. The asset that is falling trades far more often than the one that is rising.

What has changed since the $558 high of October 17

On October 17 we reported on Monero after the software update to version 0.18.5.4 and named the $558 weekly high as the level on which the move would be decided. That level has since been cleared. During the day XMR stood at $607.68, and the daily low was $555.13: what was resistance then is the lower edge of the daily range today.

What has not happened in the same period: there is no protocol change and no mainnet date that would explain the jump. The mid-October update was a maintenance release. The rebuild of transaction verification that runs under the label FCMP++ has so far only been run on test networks; the developers have not named an activation date for the mainnet. Anyone explaining the rise with a technical event is explaining it with something that has not yet taken place.

The second difference from October 17 is Zcash. Back then both assets were moving in the same direction. Since that date ZEC has lost 13.86 percent and XMR has gained 10.48 percent. That is almost 24 percentage points of distance in seven days between two assets assigned to the same category.

Why Zcash and Monero are diverging: liquidity, not a shared narrative

There is a sober explanation for the spread, and it lies in tradability. Zcash remains widely available at large regulated exchanges and, since October, reachable through exchange-traded products. That ties the price to money which arrives quickly and leaves quickly: anyone entering through a fund or with leverage also exits, and that amplifies moves in both directions. Zcash's 26.99 percent monthly loss is the reverse side of the inflows that carried the asset before.

With Monero the opposite applies. It looks like strength but arises as a side effect. The fewer regulated venues that list XMR, the smaller the share of the holdings that can be sold at short notice. A small freely tradable float moves further upward on the same buying interest, and just as far downward under selling pressure. The gap to Zcash is therefore first of all a statement about market mechanics, not about the quality of the two protocols.

What a narrow market means for you in practice

A narrow market shows up in two places you can see directly in your portfolio. The spread between the buying and the selling price widens, and larger orders move the price themselves. At a daily turnover of $195 million that goes unnoticed on small amounts, but not on four-figure sums. Anyone selling into a market like that gets the price they saw on screen less often.

Anonymity coins in the EU anti-money-laundering regulation: Article 79 applies from July 10, 2027

The framework narrowing access to Monero in Europe is the EU anti-money-laundering regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624. Its Article 79 prohibits credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto service providers from keeping accounts that allow holders to be anonymised; crypto assets with built-in anonymisation functions are named explicitly. Under Article 90 of the regulation, the provision applies from July 10, 2027.

What the rule covers, and what it does not

The addressee is the service provider, not the investor. The regulation bars a supervised company from holding or trading such assets for customers. It does not bar you from owning Monero privately, nor from self-custody in your own wallet. Anyone holding XMR therefore does not have to sell because a deadline expires in 2027. What falls away is the convenient route: custody with a provider authorised in the EU.

The effect sets in well before the cut-off date, and that is exactly what can be observed in 2026. Trading venues do not clear such assets from their offering on the day the rule takes effect, but long beforehand, because authorisation, review and product approval all need lead time. According to our own analysis of October 6, six large trading venues no longer list XMR for customers in Germany.

KuCoin closed XMR deposits on October 10

A current example of the friction in day-to-day use comes from KuCoin. In a notice dated October 10 the exchange closed Monero deposits for wallet maintenance. The notice states explicitly that withdrawals are not affected. It names no date for resumption.

This is neither expropriation nor a delisting, and the distinction matters: anyone with XMR sitting there can still withdraw it. But it is an example of the kind of disruption that becomes more frequent with an asset whose infrastructure is shrinking. Maintenance windows without an end date have occurred several times at Monero in recent years, and they always hit whoever wants to trade right now.

Where you can still trade XMR in Germany at all

For practical purposes that means the trading venue now decides more about whether your position is reachable than the price does. Three points count now. First, whether your provider still lists XMR for customers in Germany in spot trading at all, rather than merely showing it on a chart. Second, whether deposits and withdrawals in XMR are open, because the two are switched separately. Third, whether the provider holds authorisation under MiCA, because how it has to handle Article 79 depends on that. Which firms hold that authorisation is set out in our comparison of the best regulated crypto exchanges.

Self-custody of XMR: what a hardware wallet does and what it does not

Because the route through service providers is narrowing, the weight shifts towards custody of your own. A hardware wallet is a device that generates the private key and never releases it; a transaction is signed on the device and the computer never sees the key. For Monero it is the only route that stays independent of a provider's authorisation questions. Supported devices and the differences between them are set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

Two limits come with it. Self-custody shifts the risk, it does not remove it: anyone who loses the recovery phrase loses the holding for good, and nobody can retrieve it. And it does not solve the trading problem. In the end you have to sell where a buyer sits, which means at a trading venue again: your own wallet secures ownership, not the exit.

Holding period: when the tax office leaves XMR gains untaxed

For tax purposes Monero counts in Germany as another asset within the meaning of section 23 of the Income Tax Act, like other crypto assets. From that follows the rule that moves the most money on a day with an 8 percent gain: anyone who holds for more than a year and then sells pays no income tax on the gain. Anyone selling inside the year pays tax on the gain at their personal rate, provided the total of all private disposal gains for the year reaches the €1,000 threshold.

The practical catch with an asset like Monero lies in the documentation. The holding period is measured per acquisition, and anyone who bought across several years and several trading venues, some of which no longer list XMR today, has to produce the acquisition data themselves. Export your history while you still have access to the account, not once the provider has withdrawn the offering.

Our assessment: the gap holds as long as Zcash lacks inflows

In the view of this desk, Monero's lead on the day is real but poorly secured. The numbers support it: plus 10.48 percent over seven days against minus 13.86 percent at Zcash, and that in a market where Bitcoin and Ether are giving ground. What argues against it is where the lead comes from. It does not rest on a documented event at Monero, no protocol date, no authorisation decision, no new infrastructure, but substantially on the freely tradable float having grown smaller. That is the same mechanism which amplifies a move downward just as much.

What follows from that: a narrow market is not a verdict on quality. The $607.68 of the daily high is around 24 percent away from the record Monero reached on January 14, 2026 at $797.73. Reachability in 2027 will be decided by Article 79 in any case, not by a chart level. No buy recommendation can be derived from this, and a total loss is possible with any crypto asset.

What would close the gap again

Two developments would be solid signals, and both are verifiable rather than merely plausible. The first is a return of inflows at Zcash through the exchange-traded products that launched in October; ZEC would then have the buyer base Monero lacks. The second is a decision by a trading venue authorised in the EU to keep listing XMR before 2027, or to list it again: that would be the only piece of news that would actually widen the narrow market at Monero. An activation date for FCMP++ on the mainnet would come as a further signal, but the developers have not named one to this day.

Monero at $592: without inflows it stays an interim reading

1. Check today whether your trading venue still lists XMR in spot trading for customers in Germany and whether deposits and withdrawals are open. Anyone who has to switch will find the authorised firms in our comparison of the best regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Decide which part of your holding belongs in your own custody before access closes at a provider. The differences between devices are set out in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Export your purchase history for every acquisition while the account is still open, so that the one-year period under section 23 of the Income Tax Act remains documented. Tools for that are shown in our overview of crypto tax software.

(As of October 18, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)