XMR

Monero

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said Monero represents the kind of privacy-preserving cryptocurrency Bitcoin might have become if stronger cryptographic tooling had been available at the time, praising the project’s technical design and its refusal to dilute its cypherpunk principles. Speaking in an interview with David Gokhstein, the Cardano founder framed Monero not as a marginal privacy coin, but as one of the sector’s more important ideological and technical reference points. His comments centered less on price or market structure than on a broader debate over privacy, usability and what role uncompromising projects should play in crypto’s long-term direction. “Honestly speaking, Monero is what Bitcoin should have been,” Hoskinson said. “They just didn’t have the technology at the time, and it’s a lot more complicated to run a privacy-preserving system. But there’s a lot to love in Monero, like the ASIC-resistant puzzles, the full-chain membership proofs, how they handle the view keys.” Cardano Founder Praises Monero Hoskinson’s argument was that privacy at scale is inherently harder to implement than transparent settlement. In his telling, Monero’s contribution is not limited to a single feature, but to a stack of design choices built around keeping privacy central while still maintaining a usable network. He cited Monero’s work around ring signatures and privacy-preserving architecture as examples of a project that pushed crypto beyond transparent ledgers without abandoning decentralization. “These are smart things,” he said, adding that Monero “was a pioneer in ring signatures” and “a pioneer in a lot of privacy at scale.” The praise is notable because it comes from one of the most visible founders in the broader crypto industry and touches on a recurring fault line in the sector: whether cryptocurrencies should prioritize auditability and regulatory legibility, or stronger default privacy for users. Hoskinson’s comments placed Monero firmly on the side of the latter, while acknowledging that this comes with trade-offs in complexity. He also drew a distinction between cryptographic rigor and product usability, arguing that privacy systems are often built by specialists whose threat models can make products difficult for ordinary users to navigate. “Because the thing about privacy is it’s built usually by cryptographers, and cryptographers are super weird paranoid people living in basements with no friends,” Hoskinson said. “And the reason they became a cryptographer is they think everybody’s out to get them.” The line was delivered jokingly, but it supported a more serious point. According to Hoskinson, the challenge for privacy-focused systems is not only to achieve strong guarantees, but to make those guarantees accessible without weakening the underlying ethos. “What the Monero community did, and they pioneered, was figuring out how to make it more usable, but they never violated once their cypherpunk ethos ,” he said. “So you still mine it, and there’s still that decentralized mindset and all these other things.” UPDATE: Charles Hoskinson says “Monero is what Bitcoin should have been. There’s a lot to love in $XMR , like ASIC-resistant puzzles, full-chain membership proofs, how they handle view keys, these are smart things. They’ve been a pioneer in ring signatures and privacy at scale.” pic.twitter.com/fZpIPooubC — Angry Crypto Show (@angrycryptoshow) May 13, 2026 That framing matters because Monero has long occupied a distinct position in crypto. It is not merely a privacy feature bolted onto a larger smart-contract ecosystem; its identity is tied to default privacy, mining, and a community culture that tends to resist compromise. Hoskinson suggested that this kind of hardline position remains necessary, even in an industry increasingly shaped by institutions, compliance demands and public-chain analytics. “You need people like that in the space to be part of that conversation and to be uncompromising in that conversation,” he said. Hoskinson then used a superhero analogy to describe how different crypto communities can serve different functions. Not every project, in his view, needs to solve the same problem or make the same trade-offs. Some may focus on scalability, others on smart contracts, settlement, identity or privacy. The important point, he argued, is that privacy maximalists should have a seat in the room. “What you want to do is you bring them together like a justice league,” Hoskinson said. “Everybody’s welcome in the Justice League. So there’s a Justice League of Privacy, and Monero is definitely part of that Justice League, and they’ve always had an important role, which should never be discounted.” At press time, Monero traded at $394.45.

Belarus has taken a significant step in regulating cryptocurrency by authorizing 26 digital assets for legal trading. This approval, published in Minsk, extends to prominent stablecoins, major cryptocurrencies, and popular altcoins. Continue Reading:Belarus Opens Doors to Crypto ...

North Korean hacking groups have been tied to most major crypto exchange attacks in South Korea since 2018, while billions of dollars in suspected illicit crypto flows have also moved through the country’s financial system. According to Crystal Intelligence’s 2026…

Explore the top privacy coins of 2026: Monero, Zcash, and Dash. Learn how each works, their investment potential, and the regulatory challenges they face. The post Top Privacy Cryptocurrencies for 2026: Analyzing Monero, Zcash, and Dash appeared first on Blockonomi.

Arthur Hayes has put Zcash at the center of his crypto thesis, saying in an interview with Unchained founder Laura Shin that ZEC is now “probably my largest position outside of Bitcoin.” The BitMEX co-founder framed the trade as a bet on rising demand for financial privacy as AI, Big Tech and governments make public-chain activity easier to analyze. Hayes said he views Zcash as the strongest privacy asset in crypto, while acknowledging that the debate between Zcash, Monero and other privacy coins remains unsettled. “I think Zcash is the best,” Hayes said. He added that he is “not a cryptographer,” but said his view was shaped by reading competing arguments and speaking with developers working directly on privacy systems. His argument was not that Bitcoin should become fully private. Hayes said Bitcoin’s transparent ledger still has advantages for accountability, but argued that transparency comes with a growing trade-off as surveillance tools improve. “With AI, big tech and big government, it’s very trivial to de-anonymize transactions,” he said. Related Reading: Zcash Hits New YTD High As Multicoin Discloses ZEC Bet That, in Hayes’ view, creates room for a separate privacy asset to accrue value alongside Bitcoin rather than inside it. He described Zcash and Monero as trading at very low relative values versus BTC and called the setup asymmetric if privacy demand becomes more obvious to investors. The catalyst, as he sees it, is not merely regulatory pressure or user preference, but the exponential improvement of AI systems that can link activity across public data sets. Arthur on why the Zcash and NEAR integration is the quietly building mechanism that flips NEAR from inflationary to deflationary “Shielded Zcash lets you swap and send any coin, USDT on Tron, Bitcoin, anything, and that transaction will not point back to you. Completely… https://t.co/AOWKNsDRbc pic.twitter.com/tytoAgM5q0 — Laura Shin (@laurashin) May 12, 2026 Hayes Connects Zcash And NEAR In Latest Essay Hayes extended that thesis in his latest Crypto Trader Digest essay, “The Butterfly Touch,” dated May 11 on his Substack. In the essay, Hayes argued that rising dollar and yuan liquidity, driven by AI infrastructure spending, geopolitical conflict and renewed credit creation, has reopened the risk-on window for crypto markets. He said Bitcoin bottomed earlier this year at $60,000 and argued that a move back to $126,000 is a “foregone conclusion” if fiat liquidity keeps expanding. Related Reading: Zcash Is Crypto’s Most Mispriced Asset, Cypherpunk CIO Says The essay’s altcoin section was more explicit. Hayes wrote that it is “time to shitcoin,” saying Hyperliquid and Zcash are already large enough positions for Maelstrom, while NEAR is his “next favorite” trade. He said his next essay would lay out why the “privacy narrative” combined with Near Intents could create a “positive cash flow situation” for the protocol. That framing links Zcash and NEAR under a broader privacy-and-utility thesis. Zcash represents Hayes’ preferred pure-play privacy exposure, while NEAR appears to be the next asset he wants to connect to that theme through intent-based execution and potential protocol-level cash flow. He argued that such a setup could help reverse NEAR’s weak token performance and potentially push it back toward older cycle highs. For Zcash, Hayes’ case is more direct. He said privacy is likely to become more valuable as public blockchains become easier to interrogate with increasingly capable AI systems. “People want that privacy,” he said. “And there will be a private alternative.” At press time, Zcash traded at $541.75. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

AI and Big Tech have made it easier to de-anonymize, creating a need for a separate privacy coin, Arthur Hayes said during a podcast.

Zcash climbs roughly 5% to $584 and lands in CoinGecko's trending list, with a $9.7B market cap and $719M in 24-hour trading volume on May 13, 2026.

The current crypto market reflects a mixed liquidity environment where capital continues to rotate between speculative narratives and established blockchain ecosystems. Across this shifting landscape, projects like Apeing, BNB, Solana, SUI, Ethereum, XRP, Tron, Stellar, and Moner...

ZCash tends to emerge each time financial privacy is brought up within the cryptosphere. ZCash is considered an older proof-of-work coin, based on the use of zero knowledge proofs and still very much oriented towards financial privacy despite the trend in the cryptosphere towards...