Something strange is happening with Monero. While over 73 exchanges quietly removed XMR from their platforms throughout 2025, a U.S. state legislature is now considering legislation that would formally designate seized Monero as a government strategic asset. That contradiction is what has the XMR community buzzing this week – and for good reason.
Arizona SB1649: The Bill That Names Monero Alongside Bitcoin
Arizona’s SB1649 cleared the House Rules Committee unanimously last week, advancing a bill that would change how the state handles seized digital assets. Instead of auctioning them off, the proposed legislation would allow Arizona to hold cryptocurrencies in a strategic reserve fund.
Here’s the part that caught people off guard: the bill specifically mentions Monero by name.
SB1649 lists Bitcoin, XRP, and XMR as examples of cryptocurrencies eligible for inclusion in Arizona’s Digital Assets Strategic Reserve Fund. The language isn’t accidental – lawmakers reviewed it, and the committee passed it without a single dissenting vote.
The bill previously cleared the Arizona Senate with bipartisan support. It now heads to a full House floor vote.
For a coin that has been systematically delisted from Kraken, Binance, OKX, and dozens of other platforms, being written into U.S. state legislation as a legitimate reserve asset is a significant development. It doesn’t happen quietly.
73 Delistings, Yet the Network Keeps Humming
The exchange situation for Monero has gotten brutal. A February 2026 report documented 73 delistings across major platforms during 2025 alone. The pattern is driven by regulatory pressure – the EU has signaled it plans to ban exchanges from listing privacy coins entirely by 2027, and Japan and South Korea already effectively prohibit them through exchange regulations.
Yet despite all that, Monero’s daily transaction count hasn’t collapsed. Data circulating on X this week showed Monero processing between 20,000 and 35,000 transactions per day. Compare that to Zcash, which handles 4,500 to 10,000 daily transactions while holding a market cap roughly 85% of Monero’s. The usage gap between the two is stark.
The network keeps running. People keep transacting. The delisting wave is clearly driving volume off centralized exchanges and onto peer-to-peer platforms, no-KYC swaps like THORChain, and atomic swap services. THORChain supporters have been vocal about this on X, calling it the natural home for XMR price discovery.
The REF1695 Complication
Timing matters here. Just as Monero is picking up some unusual political legitimacy via Arizona’s bill, a new cybersecurity report from Elastic Security Labs dropped this week that will give regulators fresh ammunition.
Researchers exposed an operation called REF1695, a financially motivated hacking group active since at least late 2023. The group has been spreading Monero mining malware through fake software installers disguised as legitimate non-profit tools. Victims download what looks like a real application – and instead get a cryptominer silently running in the background.
Elastic’s report tracked the operation across multiple campaigns and found that REF1695 had accumulated approximately 27.88 XMR across four wallets through a combination of cryptomining and click fraud. The operation is still active.
This is a recurring problem for Monero. Its privacy features – ring signatures, stealth addresses, RingCT – make it genuinely impossible to trace transactions on the blockchain. That’s the feature, not the bug, for privacy advocates. But it’s also why ransomware operators, cryptojackers, and darknet markets have long favored XMR. Every headline like REF1695 feeds the narrative that regulators use to justify delistings.
The Tension That Defines Monero in 2026
Here’s what the X conversation is really wrestling with this week, and it’s a legitimate debate: can a coin that regulators consider non-compliant by design also become a legitimate state-held asset?
Arizona’s bill suggests the answer might be yes – at least in the specific context of law enforcement seizures. The state isn’t buying Monero on the open market. It’s saying that if it seizes Monero in a criminal case, it should be allowed to hold it rather than sell it immediately. The distinction matters legally, even if the optics are complicated.
But the broader question persists. The EU’s incoming privacy coin ban, Japan’s existing restrictions, and the constant exchange delisting pressure all point in one direction. Meanwhile, Monero’s actual usage metrics suggest a coin that’s moving underground rather than going away.
The XMR-to-ZEC comparison trending on X this week captures the situation cleanly. Monero has four to five times the daily transaction volume of Zcash, yet the two coins are priced within 15% of each other by market cap. Either Monero is undervalued relative to its actual utility, or the market is pricing in a future where it becomes increasingly difficult to access. Probably some of both.
Price Context
As of April 10th, Monero is holding near key resistance levels with analysts tracking a potential breakout setup. The RSI is sitting around 52.76 – neutral territory – with MACD tightening in a way that some technical analysts read as a momentum shift building. Whether Arizona’s bill passing a full House vote acts as a catalyst is an open question.
FAQ
Does Arizona’s SB1649 mean the government is buying Monero?
No. The bill specifically applies to cryptocurrency obtained through law enforcement seizures. It would allow Arizona to hold seized XMR in a strategic reserve rather than immediately liquidating it. The state wouldn’t be purchasing Monero on the open market.
Why are exchanges delisting Monero if the network is still active?
Exchanges operate under regulatory frameworks that require them to set up Anti-Money Laundering controls. Because Monero’s privacy features make transaction tracing impossible, exchanges in many jurisdictions can’t meet their AML obligations while offering XMR trading. The EU plans to formalize this into a ban by 2027. Volume has been shifting to decentralized platforms and atomic swaps as a result.
What is the REF1695 operation and does it affect Monero’s legitimacy?
REF1695 is a hacking group that deploys Monero mining malware through fake software installers, documented by Elastic Security Labs in a report released this week. The operation is financially motivated and unrelated to the Monero project or community. But, incidents like this are routinely used by regulators to justify exchange delistings and restrictions on privacy coins.
Sources: Elastic Security Labs REF1695 Report (March 31, 2026), CryptoRank – Arizona SB1649 Committee Pass, thecryptobasic.com, CCN.com February 2026 network activity report, Hackread REF1695 coverage (April 7, 2026)
