Monero is up 30% over the past week; what are the major factors behind its upsurge?

Monero, the biggest privacy-focused cryptocurrency by valuation, increased from $44 to $58 in the past seven days by a staggering 30 percent.

Behind its abrupt increase in price are an all-time high hashrate, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's optimism towards anonymous cryptocurrencies, and Monero's strong technology that allows for real anonymity.

In the past two years, Monero evolved into a top ten cryptocurrency, overtaking the likes of Cardano and Stellar.

Monero remains as one of the only cryptocurrencies to provide full anonymity that blockchain analytics firms cannot trace.

Companies like Chainalysis have been developing technologies to target Monero, but have been unsuccessful to date.

Unlike competing private cryptocurrencies such as Zcash, Monero does not provide an alternative way to process non-private transactions.

The robust technology and anonymity of Monero put together with rising hashrate and user activity have positioned Monero for further growth.

As said by Europol strategic analyst Jerek Jakubcek in a webinar, Monero transactions are untraceable.

There was significant optimism towards Zcash at the time of the launch because it allowed users and exchanges to choose between private and non-private transactions, but the gap between the valuation of Monero and Zcash demonstrates that the market prefers Monero over other top private cryptocurrencies.

Based on the price trend of XMR to date, the market indicates that investors perceive Monero as the top privacy-focused cryptocurrency in the global market.