Monero Under Siege: Kraken Halts Deposits as Qubic Seizes 51% Hashrate Dominance

Monero faces a perfect storm as Kraken freezes deposits and Qubic grabs majority control of the network—just another Tuesday in crypto's wild west.

Kraken pulls the plug

The exchange suddenly suspended XMR deposits without warning, leaving traders scrambling. No explanations given—just the cold shoulder treatment Monero's privacy features apparently couldn't hide from.

Qubic's hostile takeover

The mining pool now commands 51% of Monero's hashrate, crossing the dangerous threshold where network integrity starts looking like Swiss cheese. Decentralization purists are screaming 'I told you so' over their artisanal cold brew.

Meanwhile, traditional finance bros are too busy shorting coffee futures to notice another crypto infrastructure crisis—after all, what's one more red flag in a sector that treats warning signs like a bucket list?

Qubic, an AI-focused blockchain and mining pool, claimed it achieved 51% hashrate dominance over Monero following a month-long technical confrontation.

“After a month-long, high-stakes technical confrontation, Qubic reached 51% of Monero’s hashrate dominance, successfully reorganizing the blockchain,” Qubic representatives announced Tuesday.

Pool survives denial of service counterattack

While Monero community members initially denied the attack claims, mining pool statistics now confirm Qubic as the dominant Monero miner.

Qubic faced resistance during its takeover attempt, briefly falling to seventh place among Monero miners. On August 4, the pool suffered a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which significantly reduced its computational power.

The DDoS attack dropped Qubic’s hashrate from 2.6 gigahashes per second to just 0.8 GH/s, according to Sergey Ivancheglo, who claimed responsibility for the 51% attack. Denial-of-service attacks flood networks with fake traffic, disrupting legitimate operations.

Despite the counterattack, Qubic recovered its hashing power and accumulated enough computational resources to control majority network operations. Current mining statistics confirm Qubic’s position as the top Monero mining pool.

Kraken’s deposit suspension aims to prevent potential losses from double-spending attacks while the network remains compromised.

Other exchanges may implement similar measures until normal mining distribution resumes.

A 51% attack allows attackers to spend the same coins multiple times by reversing confirmed transactions. Exchanges become primary targets in such attacks since they handle large transaction volumes and hold significant cryptocurrency reserves.

The Monero network’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism requires majority hashrate control to validate transactions. Qubic’s dominance theoretically gives it the power to reorganize blocks and censor transactions on the network.