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.
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.
