Monero Jumps 27% in a Suspected $120 Million Laundering Run: Too Loud to Hide?

A suspected laundering run pushed part of a $120.2 million USDT haul into Monero (XMR), pumping the privacy coin 27%. The buyer hid its identity but broadcast its activity on every price chart.

Tether froze $72 million of the funds within a day. However, the sharper lesson sits in Monero’s order books, where size proved impossible to hide.

A $120 Million Sprint That Left Tracks on the Chart

On-chain investigator ZachXBT traced the flow from a Tron address that received 120.2 million USDT on June 11.

More than $17.5 million went to KuCoin deposit addresses, while $8 million flowed to instant exchanges.

“The entity created Monero orders which caused the XMR price to spike from $330 -> $420. Another $8M+ was bridged from Tron to Bitcoin / Ethereum via Near Intents,” ZachXBT published the trace on Telegram.

The playbook has a precedent. In April 2025, a $330 million theft fueled a similar XMR rally when the thief swapped stolen bitcoin into Monero.

Monero (XMR) Price Performance. Source: TradingView

The XMR price was $380 as of this writing, up nearly 10% in the last 24 hours, after recording an intra-day high of $475.

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Why Monero Laundering Gets Loud and Expensive at Scale

Monero ranks 16th by market cap at $7.1 billion, yet its books stay thin. Binance and other major exchanges delisted XMR in 2024 under compliance pressure, shrinking the venues where size can hide.

Global XMR turnover sat near $303 million over the past 24 hours. Against books that shallow, one entity’s buying drove the price from $330 to $420 within hours.

Monero (XMR) Trading Volume. Source: Coingecko

The move punished the buyer. Each fill landed higher than the last, and late orders cost up to 27% more than early ones. Thin liquidity worked like a tax on the operation.

The spike also served as a public alarm. Traders saw the move before they knew its cause, and the footprint reached far beyond blockchain sleuths.

‼️ $XMR hits the top 20's biggest mover today, up 10% ‼️Privacy assets are gaining technical momentum.Monero climbed to $347, decoupling from a broader market trapped in Extreme Fear.The core driver is a technical solution to the quantum threat:🔹 FCMP++ implementation… pic.twitter.com/AkclbBz4aN

— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) June 11, 2026

The dynamic suggests a ceiling. Privacy networks may absorb only so much illicit volume before the market itself gives the game away.

Tether still moved fast. It blacklisted the linked address early Friday, freezing 72,030,295 USDT within 30 seconds of detection.

Tether XMR ban-list records according to ZachXBT

The issuer froze $344 million in April with OFAC, an action US officials tied to Iranian networks.

Yet those cases targeted pre-identified, slower-moving funds.

This entity moved roughly $48 million out of reach within a day, paying Monero’s liquidity premium as its exit fee.

The frozen $72 million may never move again.

Meanwhile, the chart evidence cuts both ways. Privacy coins offer an exit from issuer control, and liquidity depth, not blacklists, sets the price of using it.