Monero (XMR) price staggers as the hash rate retreats

• Monero is the biggest privacy-focused coin in the industry.

• It has underperformed recently as the number of hash rate has slipped.

Monero price moved sideways on Thursday as investors reacted to the latest interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve. XMR, the network’s coin, was trading at $180 on Thursday, a few points below this year’s high of $187. It has jumped by more than 22% from the lowest point in January. 

Monero hash rate slipping

Monero is a leading cryptocurrency in the privacy sector. The coin makes it possible for people to send cryptocurrency in an extremely private manner. Unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin, its transactions cannot be tracked by any person.

As a result, Monero is widely used by many people, especially in dark web marketplaces. They prefer it because of the relatively low transaction costs and the fact that transactions cannot be scooped by law enforcement.

Monero price has struggled in the past few days. A likely reason is that the privacy coin industry has gotten substantially competitive. Some of the top coins that compete with Monero are Dash, Nano, and Zcash among others.

Meanwhile, the health of Monero’s ecosystem has been in a downward trend. Data shows that Monero has a hash rate of 2.42 GH/s, which is much lower than the year-to-date high of 3.15 GH/s. Unlike other popular coins like Litecoin and Bitcoin, the hash rate has been in a constant downward trend after it peaked at 3.4 in January 2022.

Hash rate is one of the most useful metrics in proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ravencoin. It provides a good measure of the health of a network by looking at the number of guesses in the network.

Other Monero metrics are also not all that encouraging. For example, according to its Block Explorer, the number of transactions on Wednesday were more than 17,800. Last week, Monero handled about 116k transactions.

Monero price prediction

XMR/USD chart by TradingView

The daily chart shows that the XMR price has been in a strong bullish trend in the past few months. In this period, it has managed to move above the lower side of the ascending channel. At the same time, it is being supported by the 25-day and 50-day moving averages. Oscillators like the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Stochastic Oscillator have continued rising.

Monero has also formed a small ascending channel that is shown in black. Therefore, there is a likelihood that it will have a bearish breakout in the coming days. If this happens, the next key level to watch will be at $167, the lowest point on January 27.

How to buy Monero