Monero's Price Rebound: Community Action Ensures Network Security Amid Mining Pool Threat

Monero's price has rebounded after a mining pool threat was swiftly addressed by the community, ensuring network security and enabling price recovery. The community's efforts led to a redistribution of hash rate, bolstering decentralization and fostering a price recovery. Monero has outperformed the broader crypto market during a surge in interest in privacy coins.

Monero's (XMR) price has rebounded after a mining pool threat was swiftly addressed by the community, ensuring network security and enabling price recovery. The community's efforts led to a redistribution of hash rate, bolstering decentralization and fostering a price recovery. Monero has outperformed the broader crypto market during a surge in interest in privacy coins.

The price of Monero (XMR) has dropped 15.96% on the week so far [2]. XMR investors are rushing for the exits as news spreads of a 51% network attack by the Qubic mining pool. The charts show bearish momentum is accelerating. Decrypt’s Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Hub. Discover SCENE The majority of the crypto market may be rejoicing today, but the king of privacy coins is in panic mode: Monero, which trades as XMR, is currently the third-worst performer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, and it’s down almost 25% in the last month. For context, other privacy coins remain bullish: Zcash is up 2% today, Dash is flat after a 10% spike in the week, and privacy-focused layer-2 tokens like Starknet and ZKSync spiked 5.3% and 4.4% today, respectively. XMR, meanwhile, plunged more than 7% over the last 24 hours to $251.35. So why is Monero nuking? The selloff is the culmination of weeks of mounting pressure as rival blockchain project Qubic steadily accumulated XMR mining power, ultimately claiming majority control of the Monero network's hashrate. That would mean a rival chain is effectively in control of Monero, so you can imagine the level of uncertainty XMR holders might be feeling. This led to a heavy price increase for Qubic, and a corresponding price crash for Monero. Qubic price data. Image: TradingView Trading volume on XMR surged dramatically as Monero investors rushed for the exits, with the token breaking through multiple support levels that it had held for months. At its current $253 per coin, the decline extends XMR's weekly losses to over 25%, erasing gains built up during the summer rally and pushing the privacy coin to its lowest levels since May. This represents one of the most severe single-day drops for Monero in 2025, comparable only to broader market corrections during periods of intense regulatory uncertainty. Monero 51% attack: Real threat or marketing stunt? The core of Monero's crisis lies in an unprecedented situation: Qubic, a project led by former IOTA co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo, says it has secured more than 51% of Monero's global hashrate, a milestone that, if true, gives it the ability to reorganize blocks, censor transactions, and attempt double-spends on the privacy-focused blockchain. The concept of a 51% attack represents one of the most fundamental threats to any proof-of-work blockchain network. When a single entity or coordinated group controls the majority of a network's mining power—specifically more than 50% of the total hashrate—they gain the ability to manipulate the blockchain in several damaging ways. In other words, it renders the blockchain useless because the entity in control can execute whatever it wants—and there is no consensus because the attacker’s decisions become the de-facto consensus majority. For Monero, which has built its reputation on providing untraceable transactions and robust privacy protections, such an attack would be particularly devastating. The network's RandomX algorithm was specifically designed to resist ASIC mining and maintain decentralization by favoring CPU and GPU mining. However, Qubic uses a novel "useful proof-of-work,” or uPoW, system that has been incentivizing Monero CPU mining to fuel its own token economy. By converting mined XMR into USDT stablecoins to buy and burn QUBIC tokens, Qubic aims to create a deflationary model for its own coin. Rather than launching a traditional attack for profit or disruption, the project has created economic incentives that naturally draw miners away from distributed pools toward their centralized operation. This represents a new category of attack that doesn't rely on malicious intent but superior economic incentives. However, the cryptocurrency community remains divided on whether this constitutes a genuine attack or an elaborate demonstration. Countering the Monero attack allegation, Qubic's founder, Sergey Ivancheglo, said, this wasn't about taking Monero down. Instead, he says the move helped Monero prepare for future threats, especially from powerful organizations that might try to harm it. A lot of people were asking how #Qubic was planning to do sustained 51% domination over #Monero if 50% of Qubic mining time must be spent on #Aigarth tasks. First I was answering "Let's make a surprise to $XMR miners", but then I realized that the #cryptocurrency community would… — Come-from-Beyond (@c___f___b) July 25, 2025 The evidence of network disruption appears concrete. The Monero Consensus Status dashboard shows Monero experienced 60 orphaned blocks (valid blocks that were rejected) in the last 720 blocks, indicating significant blockchain instability. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet warned on X earlier today that Monero "appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack," citing signs of a major chain reorganization, lending credibility to the most serious interpretation of the situation. Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack. The

References:
[1] https://coinpaper.com/10548/qubic-targets-dogecoin-after-monero-51-attack
[2] https://decrypt.co/334814/monero-xmr-price-51-attack-whats-next