Monero Price News: As Zcash Devs Depart, XMR Steps In to Lead Privacy Coins

Monero (XMR) has jumped by more than 40% in the past week following news that Zcash’s entire developing team decided to leave the project.

This widely covered development concerning Zcash put strong downward pressure on the value of its native asset, ZEC.

As XMR rose, ZEC lost nearly 19% of its value. So, it is not the end of the privacy token mania, but there seems to have been a noticeable rotation out of ZEC and into XMR after developers resigned.

Josh Swihart, the head of Zcash’s top developing company, the Electric Coin Company (ECC), highlighted that a total of 25 members of his team departed with him due to an ongoing “dispute” with Bootstrap, a non-profit organization (NGO) appointed to oversee ECC.

The conflict began with a change in certain governance directives by Bootstrap that, according to Swihart, made things too difficult for ECC to continue doing its work.

Although the decision does not affect the integrity or proper functioning of the Zcash blockchain, it does cast a veil of uncertainty concerning the project’s roadmap, which ECC was in charge of developing.

Monero Experienced Technical Hiccups Recently as Well

XMR is the largest of the two projects with a market capitalization exceeding $11 billion, which is almost twice the market value of ZEC.

Nonetheless, the latter has not been free of controversy. Last year, this privacy-focused blockchain suffered a 51% attack as Qubic, a layer-1 blockchain, reportedly achieved to gain control of the majority of the network’s hashrate temporarily.

Qubic’s intentions were not to harm the network, but rather to demonstrate the flaws of its design and warn the community that this type of attack is not as impossible as some seem to think.

Market sentiment is still on the cautious side, as the Fear and Greed Index¹ currently sits at 50, which is Neutral territory.

Although this is still a major improvement compared to the record low levels this sentiment gauge reached recently, it still means that investors are playing it safe. Since privacy tokens have performed quite well, XMR may be considered the “momentum trade” for market participants at the time.

XMR Could Reach $700 If This Key Support Holds

Incidents aside, XMR’s trading volumes have exploded by nearly 200% in the past 24 hours. At $475 million, they account for 4% of the token’s circulating market cap.

XMR/USD Daily Chart (Crypto.com) – Source: TradingView

The daily chart shows that XMR has booked strong gains in the past 3 days, while it has closed the last 6 out of 8 days with a green candle as well.

As a result, positive momentum has accelerated, pushing the Relative Strength Index (RSI) to overbought territory already. This increases the odds of a pullback, but also indicates that the latest uptrend is quite strong.

We may expect a drop to $470 in the near term, as this has been a relevant area for both buyers and sellers in the past.

If the price bounces off this mark, that could result in a much stronger jump to $700 in the near term, meaning a 49% upside potential for late buyers who enter once the price hits that mark.