Monero’s activity has remained resilient even as it has been removed from several major cryptocurrency exchanges. New research from TRM Labs shows that transaction usage through 2024 and 2025 stayed higher than levels seen before 2022. This suggests demand for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency has not weakened despite growing regulatory and compliance pressure.
According to the report, Monero continues to attract users who value transaction privacy, even as access through centralized trading platforms becomes more limited. The data challenges the assumption that delistings would significantly reduce real world use of the token.
Exchange and Regulatory Pressure Mounts
In 2024, several large exchanges began removing or restricting Monero from their platforms. Binance and Kraken both cited compliance and traceability concerns as reasons for their decisions. These moves made it harder for users to trade Monero through mainstream channels.
Pressure intensified in 2025 when regulators in Dubai banned privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash on licensed platforms within the Dubai International Financial Centre. Despite these actions, TRM Labs found no sharp decline in Monero transaction activity, indicating that users may be shifting to alternative access points rather than abandoning the asset altogether.
Ransomware Still Favors Bitcoin
While Monero is often associated with illicit finance due to its privacy features, the report notes that it is not the dominant currency for ransomware payments. Bitcoin remains the most common choice for real world ransom settlements.
Monero transactions per month hold strong. Source: TRM Labs
Ransomware groups frequently request Monero and sometimes offer discounts for victims who use it. Even so, most payments still arrive in Bitcoin, largely because it is easier for victims to obtain quickly through regulated exchanges and brokers. This trend highlights a gap between criminal preference for privacy and practical payment behavior.
Darknet Markets Move Toward Monero
Darknet marketplaces, however, appear to be taking a different path. TRM Labs found that 48 percent of newly launched darknet markets in 2025 supported only Monero. This marks a clear increase compared with previous years, when Bitcoin and mixed currency support were more common.
Researchers say the shift reflects a growing emphasis on privacy by market operators. By relying exclusively on Monero, these platforms reduce the risk of transaction tracing and asset seizure, even if it limits their user base to those already familiar with privacy tools.
Network Behavior Raises New Questions
Although Monero’s cryptography continues to hide sender, recipient, and transaction amounts, the report looked beyond the blockchain itself. Researchers examined how transactions travel across the Monero network and identified unusual patterns among roughly 14 to 15 percent of nodes.
These nodes showed unexpected timing behavior and were clustered on specific servers. The findings do not suggest the network has been compromised. Instead, they raise the possibility that some operators may be running multiple connected nodes to observe how transactions propagate. In peer to peer systems, nodes that see a transaction earlier than others can sometimes infer where it originated.
TRM Labs noted that while Monero’s on chain privacy remains intact, network level observation could affect theoretical anonymity if enough data is collected.
Software Update Targets Spy Nodes
In response to long standing concerns about network surveillance, Monero released a software update in October 2025 known as Fluorine Fermi version 0.18.4.3. The upgrade introduced improved peer selection designed to guide wallets away from suspicious nodes and toward safer parts of the network.
The update focuses on defending against so called spy nodes. These nodes do not break Monero’s encryption but attempt to link transactions to IP addresses by watching how data moves across the network. Debate over this risk intensified after a leaked 2024 video suggested investigators could monitor activity through their own nodes.
While questions about network level privacy remain, the data suggests Monero continues to serve a dedicated user base. Even as exchanges step back and regulators tighten rules, the privacy coin is maintaining its role in parts of the crypto economy that place anonymity above convenience.
