• Monero’s massive rally coincided with renewed investor interest. 
• The Futures market was still bullish on the altcoin at the time of writing. 

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero [XMR] was one of the outliers in the weekly charts despite a broader market sell-off.

During Thursday’s early Asia trading session, XMR topped the weekly chart with a nearly 10% gain, per CoinMarketCap data. 

Monero’s contrarian and explosive price move on the price charts preceded strong worldwide interest in late August, as highlighted by Google Trends.

Global users’ interest in the search giant peaked at 69 between the 25th to the 31st of August, dominated by St. Helena and China. This was the highest interest level since 2021. 

Interestingly, the increased interest in Telegram coincided with Pavel Durov’s arrest in France.

Given the overall perceived ‘attack on free speech’ following Durov’s arrest, most users might have renewed interest in privacy-focused assets. 

Monero [XMR] price action

Amid peak interest in late August, XMR exploded 12%, rallying from $152 to $172. However, it has been consolidating around $170 in the past few days.

An evaluation of the price action revealed that the $170 level was a Q3 supply zone (marked red) that tipped price rejections in July and August. 

However, at the time of writing, XMR had stayed above the supply for the past three days but didn’t strongly extend the recovery that began in August.

Nevertheless, the stochastic RSI (Relative Strength Index) and RSI suggested that an extended rally was plausible because the indicators had not hit overbought levels yet.

If so, the next immediate target would be $182 or $194 in the near term, especially if overall market sentiment improves. 

However, an extra weakening could tip sellers to drag XMR to lower supports at $158 or $152.

Read Monero [XMR] Price Prediction 2024–2025

Meanwhile, the derivatives market had strong bullish conviction as 56% of XMR speculators’ bets were long positions.

This suggested that futures traders were hopeful for an extended recovery for the altcoin.