Okay so a couple of days have passed and the Monero price is still significantly higher than before the move or pump (currently around $280, up from $210-230 before):
Source: Coingecko (April 27 until today)
If my assumption from
this post is true, then for now it doesn't look like a "privacy swap" (btc -> xmr -> btc or btc -> xmr -> fiat), which could be caused by a criminal. One can see clearly that the XMR/BTC rate (orange line in the chart) has been moved significantly to the upside, so Bitcoin's pump in the last week wasn't the reason.
Of course it can't be ruled out - the person who bought Monero could also be cashing out back to Bitcoin (or out to fiat) very slowly, capitalizing from the increased volume and potentially Monero FOMO. But I still think that if that was happening the XMR price should be lower now.
So IMO at this moment it looks as if the OP was correct and it's an one-way movement.
It was immediately my assumption that this price jump will not be pulverized due to XMR getting dumped straight down right away.
I talked to MaxMueller about it and he asked me for some fundamental reasons why XMR has potential to go up. I can't provide hard facts, but I think nobody can provide hard facts for any crypto, it is based on assumption.
For XMR I think there is tremendous upside potential and it doesn't matter whether it gets regulated or not.
As I said here (German), if someone discovers an amazing investment opportunity in cocaine fields or trafficking, the person won't care about regulation. There will be people who use XMR as a tool for things that Bitcoin can't provide for now. the question is whether XMR has enough liquidity and market cap to serve all players in the world who might have an interest to use it and I say no, XMR market cap would have to grow for that.
My other point was whether I believe that it is more likely for Bitcoin to go from 2 trillion to 4 trillion or for XMR to go from 4 billion to 8 billion, and I am damn sure that XMR will first go to 8 billion in market cap before Bitcoin reaches 4 trillion.
In this specific case now, whether it was a Bitcoin shark moving some into XMR or not, I thought it was a hack, wasn't it? This is what I read in some sources. But whoever it was and whatever the reason, this is one example how XMR could be used. If it was a hack, it is definitely not stupid to park those XMR and cash them out slowly. I don't know if the BTC->XMR->back to BTC swap would have worked as smoothly because exchanges by then might have been warned and there were some low credibility exchanges involved from what I read. They would have good reasons to just steal the money themselves if they notice quickly enough. Pulling off the whole scam circle of going back into BTC again, may have been too good to be true to get that done in literally just one continuous action I guess.
At the end of the day, as long as XMR has this market cap, it needs a single big move to outperform the rest of the market and since I am not a shit coin fan, I am pro XMR as that has one specific angle, no wird bullshit buzzword USPs, and that is why I don't consider it a shit coin. I recently read that there is a solvable security issue. I haven't been following up on that, but so far it seems to be serving the purpose it was created for.