Monero (XMR) exchange rate: from inception to the present day
Early period Monero (2014 — 2017)
Monero is one of the earliest altcoins, as it appeared on exchanges in May 2014, a month after the launch of its blockchain. At the start of trading, the price of the native XMR cryptocurrency reached $1.58, which was relatively high at the time, thanks to which the altcoin immediately established itself in the top 20 digital assets, according to CoinMarketCap. The reason for such a high price at the time of listing was the small issuance of the Monero cryptocurrency, which amounted to only about 953,000 XMR.
A month after the listing, the XMR rate reached a new all-time high (ATH) of $3.92, which could be due to the increased interest in the new anonymous cryptocurrency. However, the value of the Monero cryptocurrency then began to correct and reached its first historic low of $1.46 in August before recovering to $2.18.
In September of the same year, the Monero blockchain protocol was subjected to a planned hacker attack, as a result of which the fall of the XMR cryptocurrency resumed again, and by January 2015, its rate fell to a historic low of $0.21. Since then, the price of XMR has never fallen to such a low value.
Until June 2016, the Monero cryptocurrency rate fluctuated between $0.40 and $1.55, after which it began to grow and already, in September of the same year, reached its all-time high at $12.33. Following this, the price corrected until November, as a result of which it fell almost 3 times — $4.54, but then quickly returned to growth in January 2017, once again updating its ATH at $14.03.
Continuing its growth, the Monero cryptocurrency rate once again reached its absolute maximum, reaching $23.30 already in March. The first factor behind this prolonged growth was the favorable environment in the crypto market, as digital assets rapidly began to gain popularity around the world.
Blockchain updates could also play a role, including improvements to the RingCT system, which increases the privacy of transactions on the Monero network, as well as the Helium Hydra update, which is necessary to prepare the blockchain for a fork.
In August 2017, the value of the XMR cryptocurrency reached a new ATH of $131.95 but immediately began to correct until it fell to $85.16 in October. However, this local low was followed by a new, more substantial wave of growth, and the XMR cryptocurrency rate reached another all-time high, but already at $420.34 in mid-January 2018 — this was the peak of the cryptocurrency boom in the market, followed by a prolonged correction that lasted until early 2019.
Global correction and DeFi boom (2018 — 2021)
Throughout 2018, albeit with small bounces (to $369.06 in March and $270.81 in April), globally, the Monero cryptocurrency's price continued to fall. The first substantial price spike could have been caused by a network hard fork to counter ASIC miners. This was done to avoid the issuance of XMR too rapidly after the well-known manufacturer Bitmain introduced a new ASIC-miner running on the CryptoNight algorithm, the Antminer X3. After the update, all blocks mined with ASIC miners were rejected as invalid.
The second jump in the price of the Monero cryptocurrency may have occurred against the backdrop of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm update, which resulted in a sharp drop in hash rate, which then returned to a higher value, reducing the rate of XMR issuance.
By the end of 2018, the value of XMR fell to $41.03, caused by a general correction in the crypto market. However, during the first half of 2019, the Monero cryptocurrency rate showed growth, again followed by a correction that lasted until the beginning of 2020, when the price of the altcoin fell to $45.76.
But in early 2020, the price of the XMR cryptocurrency began to rise sharply and more than doubled in just a month and a half — to $92.27. A minor correction was followed by a substantial collapse caused by the official start of the coronavirus pandemic in March of the same year: the Monero rate fell to $35.47.
Quotes of most cryptocurrencies quickly resumed growth and began to increase rapidly. Throughout the rest of 2020 and the first half of 2021, the value of cryptocurrency XMR demonstrated growth amid the excitement around the decentralized finance market (DeFi). By the end of 2020, the Monero exchange rate rose to $157.27; in May 2021, it reached its absolute maximum at $517.62.
After reaching the new ATH, the value of Monero began to fall sharply; by July, it fell to $197.72, and by the beginning of 2022 — to $146.85.
New wave of correction and recovery (2022 — 2024)
The year 2022 was generally unfavorable for cryptocurrencies. However, the cryptocurrency Monero, despite this, managed to rise to $268.18 by April, which could have been helped by at least two events:
- The launch of the anonymous P2P network LocalMonero (now shut down);
- The release of software for the enterprise-level Monero multisig wallet.
However, a correction quickly replaced the growth, and by the beginning of May, Monero's price had fallen to $207.48. The situation was aggravated by the collapse of the blockchain platform Terra, which became a hostage of its mechanism for issuing UST stablecoin. As a result, quotes of many cryptocurrencies collapsed, and the XMR rate fell to $143.96.
After Monero hit an annual low in July 2022, it fluctuated between $116 and $177 until November 2024, even though many cryptocurrencies returned to growth in the fourth quarter of 2023. The reason for this could be the delisting of Monero from some major exchanges amid regulators' actions to ban transactions with anonymous cryptocurrencies. As of November 2024, the XMR cryptocurrency exchange rate is $150.
