During the 2025 phase of this market cycle, Monero stood out while most of crypto quietly fell apart. While headlines focused on collapses, bankruptcies, and charts grinding lower, Monero kept doing what it has always done, surviving without hype and performing when it wasn’t supposed to.
Even after a sharp correction from roughly $800 down to about $625 at the time of this post, Monero is still up over 180% over the past twelve months. That’s not a rounding error and it’s not luck. Corrections happen in every real market, but performance over time is what separates assets from speculation.
A lot of people are disappointed that so many cryptocurrencies collapsed over the past year. I’m not one of them. What we’re seeing is the long overdue collapse of garbage projects that were never worth their valuations to begin with. Tokens built on buzzwords, marketing, and VC funding were always going to find their way back to fair value.
This doesn’t mean Bitcoin and Monero will be alone forever, but it does mean most of the field won’t survive. Bitcoin remains the king for a reason, and Monero occupies a unique lane that no other project has been able to replace. Privacy isn’t a feature you can just bolt on later, and Monero was designed around that from day one.
Monero’s strength comes from real usage and real principles, not narratives. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t trendy, and it doesn’t care about social media cycles. That’s exactly why it keeps showing up when markets get ugly. When speculation dries up, utility and conviction matter again.
The correction from $800 to $625 shook out weak hands, but it didn’t break the trend. In healthy markets, that kind of move is normal. What matters is that Monero didn’t give back its entire run like so many other assets did. It held onto gains while the rest of the space continued to deflate.
Bitcoin and Monero represent two sides of the same reality. Sound money and private money. Everything else is competing for attention in an overcrowded market that doesn’t need most of what’s being sold. Fair value is an uncomfortable concept in crypto, but it’s finally being reintroduced.
From my point of view, Monero’s performance in 2025 isn’t surprising at all. It’s a reminder that fundamentals eventually win, even in an industry addicted to hype. The garbage is getting washed out, and what’s left will actually matter.