According to the latest rumor, some Asian darknet overlords are responsible.
They have billions in non-fungible digital money, and they are moving it into Monero because the Alphabet boys came down on them.
Haowang Guarantee was larger than the Silk Road, larger than Hydra, just the "largest illicit online marketplace to have ever operated", with $27 Billion of transactions since launching in 2021.
Epic trolling, I hadn't heard about that.
The hackers that dare troll the alphabet boys are either opsec noobs or god-tier.
But most of the god-tier opsec hackers know that the game is about not pissing off the alphabet boys too much, otherwise they will invest more and more in catching you, and you just need to slip once...