Monero surged roughly 30% to an intraday high of $438 on Thursday after blockchain investigator ZachXBT traced a $120 million USDT movement that included large purchases of the privacy coin, with Tether subsequently freezing $72 million in connected funds.
Monero surged roughly 30% to an intraday high of $438 late Thursday ET after blockchain investigator ZachXBT traced a $120 million USDT movement that included large purchases of the privacy coin, with Tether subsequently freezing $72 million in connected funds.
ZachXBT posted to his Investigations Telegram channel early Friday that a Tron address received 120.2 million USDT on June 11 and began routing the funds across exchanges and blockchains. According to ZachXBT’s trace, the entity transferred more than $17.5 million to deposit addresses identified as belonging to KuCoin, $8 million to various instant swap services, and bridged another $8 million to Bitcoin and Ethereum via Near Intents, a cross-chain tool.
“The entity created Monero orders which caused the XMR price to spike from $330 to $420,” ZachXBT wrote.
The On-Chain Route
ZachXBT’s trace describes the Tron wallet address TA6YHqB2xh5HhfmC7WoLQaWmqq7Vv4zCoQ receiving the 120.2 million USDT in a single incoming transaction on Thursday. The funds then fanned out across multiple routes, a pattern consistent with layering, a classic stage of money laundering.
Instant swap services convert one cryptocurrency to another without identity checks. Near Intents is a cross-chain settlement layer built on NEAR Protocol that allows swapping between blockchains in a single step.
The Monero purchases were the most visible leg of the operation. Monero is designed so that transaction senders, recipients, and amounts are all hidden by default, making it harder for investigators to follow funds once they enter the network. The large buy orders pushed XMR from roughly $330 to an intraday peak of $438, per CoinGecko, before the token pulled back to trade around $370 by early morning Friday.
Tether’s Freeze
While the laundering trace was still active, Tether froze a related address. At 07:37 UTC on June 12, the company blacklisted the Tron address TBzrPEsStbZAUx2SBhD4oHz8UW3FX9Ak9W, locking 72,030,295 USDT. The USDT/USDC Ban List Telegram channel, which records Tether’s freeze transactions in near real time, logged the action with a status of “Executed.” About 24 minutes later, ZachXBT published his investigation and noted the freeze had just occurred.
Tether retains the ability to freeze balances at the contract level on the Tron and Ethereum networks. Frozen tokens cannot be moved or redeemed. Assets like Bitcoin or Monero have no equivalent issuer-controlled mechanism.
Tether froze $344 million in USDT in a prior coordinated action with U.S. law enforcement. In that case, Tether disclosed the coordination publicly.
XMR Price and Context
At current levels near $370, XMR is up roughly 15% over the past seven days and carries a market cap of approximately $7 billion.
Monero trades on fewer exchanges than most large-cap crypto assets, partly because its privacy features complicate compliance obligations for platforms subject to anti-money-laundering rules. That reduced liquidity means large orders can move the price sharply.
It is unclear where the original $120 million came from. ZachXBT has not published further attribution. As of publication, no law enforcement agency has publicly linked the address to a named investigation.
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