A major event has occurred right at the start of the new year. On the morning of January 11, Beijing time, a social engineering scam involving hardware wallets exposed the vulnerabilities of Web3 security—victims lost over $282 million worth of Litecoin and Bitcoin after the attack.

What’s even more concerning is the hacker’s next move. The stolen funds were quickly transferred to multiple trading platforms and then exchanged in large amounts for Monero (XMR). This action directly triggered a sharp rise in XMR’s price.

Why did the hacker choose XMR? The answer is straightforward—privacy. As the leading privacy coin, Monero uses technologies like ring signatures and stealth addresses, making on-chain transactions difficult to trace. Compared to BTC, where every transaction is transparent and verifiable, XMR provides a natural privacy barrier. After converting to XMR and cashing out, the flow of funds becomes nearly impossible to track on public blockchain data.

This is also why some say that Monero is actually the true decentralized store of value—not only technically decentralized but also achieving ultimate privacy without regulatory interference. The market’s reaction is currently confirming this point.