The AMP token experienced a robust rally, reaching $0.0144, its highest level since March 11.

Ampere (AMP) has surged by about 300% from its yearly low, pushing its market capitalization to over $910 million.

The surge coincides with a broader shift into older cryptocurrencies that outperformed in 2021, following notable surges in names like Stellar Lumens (XLM) and Ripple (XRP).

AMP’s utility in the payment industry, particularly for its fast transaction speeds and low costs, has supported its price growth. Recently, AMP technology was integrated into Flexa, a growing payment network for e-commerce.

AMP’s price also rose as crypto analysts expressed bullish sentiments about the coin. In a statement, CJ Bennet, a popular crypto analyst, noted that the coin was poised for more gains, potentially reaching a record high.

Amp’s all-time high was $0.037, meaning that it still needs to gain 235% from its current level to reach that milestone.

The coin is also gaining as investors celebrate the arrival of altcoin season. Data from CoinMarketCap shows the altcoin season index has climbed to over 80, while the fear and greed index has risen to 88. Most altcoins tend to perform well during periods of high market greed.

Meanwhile, there are signs that AMP whales are accumulating the coin. According to Etherscan, one whale moved tokens worth over $2 million from Coinbase, which is seen as a bullish signal.

AMP price analysis

The daily chart shows that the AMP token price experienced a strong bullish breakout, reaching a high of $0.01450. It surpassed the crucial resistance level at $0.0091, its highest point on April 29.

The coin has formed a golden cross pattern as the 200-day and 50-day moving averages crossed each other.

The MACD and the Relative Strength Index also indicate upward momentum. Therefore, AMP needs to close above this week’s high of $0.01450 to confirm the bullish trend. A close below this high could validate a shooting star pattern, a common bearish indicator. If that occurs, the price may drop and retest the support at $0.0091.

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero surged to over $211.07 earlier today—its highest value since May 2022.

At time of publication, Monero has pulled back slightly from its local high, and is currently priced at $205.05, up 17.8% on the day and 30.6% on the week, per data from CoinGecko.

Monero’s upward momentum comes as the wider privacy coin sector has heated up over the past week, with the category as a whole up over 12% in the past 24 hours alone, according to CoinGecko data.

Leading the pack in weekly gains are cryptocurrencies including Haven (up 217%), Verge (up 188%%), Zcash (up 27.5%), and Decred (up 30%).

What are privacy coins?

Privacy coins use a variety of cryptographic techniques to shield details of transactions from public view, including ring signatures, single-use addresses and zk-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge).

Advocates for privacy coins argue that they provide an equivalent level of privacy to physical cash, and that the radical transparency of the majority of blockchains makes cryptocurrencies unsuitable for transactions. That’s because identities can be linked to wallet addresses—exposing their entire financial history.

However, privacy coins have also come under intense scrutiny from governments and law enforcement, who claim that their ability to shield transactions makes them a magnet for criminals. Accordingly, numerous efforts have been made to crack Monero’s privacy. But, so far, there’s been no indication of success.

The recent rise in the price of privacy coins comes after crypto privacy advocates scored a notable win in court, with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court ruling that the Treasury overstepped by sanctioning coin mixer Tornado Cash.

The decision, reversing a lower court ruling, held that immutable smart contracts such as those used by Tornado Cash cannot be classed as property “because they are not capable of being owned.”

While Tornado Cash is a coin mixing service rather than a privacy coin in its own right, its TORN token has surged from around $3.60 in November to a current price of around $18—briefly reaching as high as $33.64.

The regulatory clampdown on privacy coins such as Monero has seen the cryptocurrency delisted from many exchanges, including Binance and Kraken. In June 2020, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that while he personally wanted to list Monero on the exchange, “behind-the-scenes conversations” with regulators had convinced Coinbase to hold off.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

Digital Currency Group (DCG) owned mining pool Foundry has laid off 16% of its U.S.-based employees and a “small team in India.”

“We are continuously refining our strategy to ensure long-term success and growth in a dynamic market. We recently made the strategic decision to focus Foundry on our core business – operating the #1 Bitcoin mining pool in the world and growing our site operations business – while we supported the development of DCG’s newest subsidiaries, including Yuma and the spinout of Foundry’s successful self-mining business,” a DCG spokesperson said via email.

A spokesperson for the company said that DCG’s most recent shareholder letter already disclosed plans for this realignment.

“As part of this realignment, we made the difficult decision to reduce Foundry’s workforce, resulting in layoffs across multiple teams. We’re grateful for the contributions of all our employees, including those impacted by these changes,” the spokesperson continued.

Across the board, miners are under pressure to cut costs as the halving cuts the number of new bitcoins created per block in half, making mining less profitable.

The bitcoin hashprice index, a measure of the earnings a miner can anticipate from a given amount of hashrate, is down significantly over the last year to roughly $60 per hash/day, down from an average of around $100 in December – however the price has ticked up in the last three months.

In a recent report, investment bank JPMorgan said that the notional value of all remaining bitcoin left to be mined is $74 billion given current bitcoin prices and the miners’ stocks have been underperforming.

Bitcoin is up over 130% in the last year, according to CoinDesk data.