Best Crypto to Buy Now: BTC Holds $83K as Monero Leads the Privacy Trade

A $10,000 position in Monero a week ago is worth about $11,441 today. The same $10,000 in Bitcoin is worth roughly $9,845. That 15-percentage-point spread is the whole story: while the majors chop inside a tight range, the privacy-coin trade is quietly outrunning them.

Monero (XMR) traded at $611.55 at 14:16 UTC on October 20, up 2.69% over 24 hours and 14.41% over seven days, per CoinGecko data. Bitcoin held $83,046 (+1.33%), Ethereum $2,454.45 (+2.85%), Solana $107.33 (+3.89%), and Zcash — Monero’s privacy sibling, covered in our daily Zcash tracker — jumped 8.86% to $1,225.11.

The re-rating is not a one-day squeeze. It traces to a set of dated, verifiable developments. Veteran chart analyst Peter Brandt named Monero his clear favorite among a group of major coins on October 6, writing in an X post: “Of these, my favorite by far is XMR. I do not know the fundamental narrative. I do not need to know.” His case was structural rather than narrative: “XRP has all that supply overhead, but look at XMR. All the supply has been absorbed. It is clear sailing ahead.”

The Privacy Trade Has a Bid, Not Just a Story

Monero’s edge is that its float keeps shrinking while its access routes expand. Binance and OKX delisted XMR, and Kraken restricted it across the European Economic Area. That pushed trading into a thinner, more volatile book — but it also forced the ecosystem to build decentralized rails instead of leaning on exchanges.

The biggest of those rails arrived on August 25, when THORChain shipped version 3.20 with native Monero and Zcash swaps, as documented in the project’s upgrade notes. XMR and ZEC can now move directly against Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins without a wrapped token or a centralized custodian. For a coin exchanges have been discarding, that is the difference between a tradeable asset and a walled-off one.

On the code side, Monero shipped point release 0.18.5.3 on October 6 — the same day as Brandt’s call — describing itself in its own release notes as “a highly recommended release that includes a large number of bug fixes.” A follow-up 0.18.5.4 landed Saturday with DNSSEC, checkpoint and block-list fixes. Neither changes consensus rules; both are the quiet maintenance that keeps a network credible while its price runs.

The Market-Cap Math Behind a $675 XMR

Monero’s market cap sits at $11.51 billion, good for rank 13. The coin directly above it is Dogecoin at $12.7 billion. The arithmetic is simple: to flip Dogecoin, XMR needs roughly 10% more — about $675 at the current 18.82 million circulating supply. That is a near-term reference, not a moon target.

The wider bracket is just as concrete. Monero’s all-time high was $797.73 on January 14, 2026, so $675 would still leave XMR about 15% below its record even as it passes a meme coin that carries none of Monero’s actual usage. The asymmetry cuts both ways, which is why the next section matters.

The Countercase: Leverage Is Doing Some of the Lifting

Not everything in this rally is spot demand. Monero’s derivatives open interest has run to roughly $261 million, near the high end of the coin’s historical range, per CoinGlass data cited in market coverage. Open interest is a bet, not a buyer: two traders can open a contract and lift the number without a single coin changing hands.

The caution is amplified by how thin the spot book is after the delistings. Monero’s 24-hour volume of about $176 million is a rounding error next to Bitcoin’s $25 billion. On a thin book, leverage pushes price further in both directions, and Monero’s 24-hour range of $583.67 to $616.56 shows how wide the swings already are. The pair does not always hold hands either — in mid-September, Zcash spiked to $1,385 while Monero slid below $500 on the same day, a reminder that the two privacy assets can decouple hard.

There is also the regulatory overhang. EU restrictions on privacy-related crypto services are set to tighten starting in 2027, and the same delisting pattern that made Monero’s supply scarce could keep fresh capital from arriving. Privacy is a feature that regulators keep trying to price.

The Levels That Matter This Week

Support first. The $583–$590 zone — the lower half of Monero’s 24-hour range — is the first level that matters; a daily close below it opens the October 9 low near $520. Resistance sits at $616.56, today’s high, and then $630, the next upside reference flagged after the push past $600.

The invalidation is equally specific. Brandt’s line on October 6 was resistance near $561; once price cleared it, that level flipped to support. A close back below $561 would invalidate the technical case he laid out. On the upside, a weekly close above $630 would confirm the range break and put the $675 Dogecoin-flip level, then the $797.73 record, in play.

Macro matters too. The Federal Reserve’s next decision lands October 27–28, and Bitcoin has been moving in near-lockstep with the S&P 500 while Brent crude holds above $100 on Middle East supply fears. Privacy coins have decoupled from that trade — XMR is up 14.41% on the week while BTC is down 1.55% — but a broad risk-off flush on a hot inflation print would not spare a thin, leveraged book.

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