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One ether buys a lot less monero than it used to. On Oct. 22, 2026, the rate sat at roughly 3.67 XMR per ETH — a sharp drop from nearly 13 XMR a year earlier. Markets move, but that kind of shift in a cross-rate is hard to ignore.
Why It Matters
The move highlights how relative performance between crypto assets can shift even when both remain widely traded, and it underscores that cross-rates can matter as much as dollar prices for market participants. A large swing like this can influence how traders think about portfolio rotation, liquidity, and perceived strength between privacy-focused assets and major smart-contract platforms.
The math behind the move is pretty straightforward. Monero climbed above $645 while Ether fell to around $2,400. A year back, on Oct. 22, 2025, ETH was trading near $3,866 and XMR near $305. So Monero has more than doubled, and Ether is down by more than a third over the same stretch. Monero also hit an all-time high of about $798 back in January 2026, which means even after pulling back from that peak, it’s still up massively on the year. For ETH holders who’ve watched their bags shrink in dollar terms and in XMR terms simultaneously, it’s been a rough twelve months.
And the conversion math has changed in a real way for anyone thinking about moving between the two assets.
Where You Can Actually Buy Monero Now
Getting XMR isn’t as simple as it once was. Monero sits at 13th by market cap, around $12.2 billion, but access through big centralized exchanges has narrowed considerably. Binance dropped XMR trading in 2024. Kraken stopped offering it to clients in the European Economic Area that same year. So the on-ramps that most crypto users rely on have quietly closed off.
That’s pushed more people toward non-custodial swap services. GhostSwap handles swaps across more than 1,600 cryptocurrencies, Ethereum and Monero included. No account. No email. No ID upload. A user puts in a Monero receiving address, sends ETH from their own wallet, and XMR lands at that address. The quoted rate floats — it locks in when the ETH deposit confirms — and the service fee is already baked into whatever rate the interface displays. On Oct. 22, 2026, that came out to roughly 3.67 XMR per ETH after fees.
One thing to keep in mind: gas is separate. The sending wallet pays Ethereum network fees on top of the swap amount. And it has to be native ETH on Ethereum mainnet — not wrapped ETH, not ETH sitting on Arbitrum or Base. The stated minimum deposit was about 0.012 ETH, though the current minimum shows up in the swap interface before anything gets sent.
How the Swap Actually Works, Step by Step
The receiving address has to belong to a Monero wallet. MetaMask and Rabby can send ETH just fine, but they can’t hold XMR. Wallet options that work on the receiving end include Feather, a desktop wallet; Cake Wallet, which runs on phones; and the official Monero GUI. A standard Monero address runs 95 characters and starts with 4. A subaddress starts with 8. The instructions say to copy and paste — not type — and to use a fresh subaddress for each swap.
The process itself: select ETH under “You send,” XMR under “You get,” enter an amount, paste the Monero address, and also enter the Ethereum address you’re sending from. That sender address matters. If something goes wrong and a refund is needed, it goes back there. And the deposit itself has to come from that same address — not from an exchange account, which would send from the exchange’s address instead.
Once the exact amount gets transferred to the one-time deposit address, the ETH deposit typically confirms in two to five minutes. A status page tied to the swap ID tracks progress through to the XMR payout. Etherscan can also be used to watch the Ethereum side of things.
The full swap usually wraps up in 10 to 25 minutes. But the XMR isn’t spendable the moment it arrives — the receiving Monero wallet needs 10 confirmations, which takes about 20 minutes on its own.
Privacy Limits and Common Mistakes
It’s worth being clear about what this kind of swap does and doesn’t do. Ethereum transactions are public. The ETH deposit sent to the swap address is visible on Etherscan, along with balances and transfer history. If a wallet is linked to an exchange account or an ENS name, there’s already a trail back to a real-world identity.
Monero works differently. Ring signatures obscure which coins are spent. Stealth addresses create one-time destinations. RingCT hides amounts. Once XMR reaches a wallet, the transaction details aren’t publicly visible the way an Ethereum transfer is. But the ETH side of the swap remains on-chain and readable by anyone.
A swap without an account removes the customer profile that might otherwise connect both sides of the transaction. It doesn’t make the Ethereum deposit private. Those are two different things.
No bridge or wrapped token is involved in the route described. ETH arrives on Ethereum, and native XMR gets sent on the Monero network. Straightforward, but the deposit errors that can derail the process are worth knowing. Wrong network, wrapped ETH, sending from an exchange wallet, not leaving enough ETH for gas, sending the wrong amount — any of those can cause problems. Monero transfers can’t be reversed, so if a swap can’t be completed, the ETH goes back to the sender address entered for the transaction.
After the XMR lands, the 10-confirmation wait — roughly 20 minutes — still applies before the funds can move.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the current ETH-to-XMR exchange rate?
On Oct. 22, 2026, the quoted rate was about 3.67 XMR for 1 ETH after fees, down from nearly 13 XMR a year earlier as Monero rose above $645 and Ether fell to around $2,400.
How long does an ETH-to-XMR swap take on GhostSwap?
The XMR is typically sent within 10 to 25 minutes after the ETH deposit confirms. The receiving Monero wallet then needs 10 confirmations — about 20 more minutes — before the funds can be spent.
