While Bitcoin is definitely the largest cryptocurrency to ever exist, it has various shortcomings as well. Since the beginning, crypto enthusiasts have demanded a secure, more private, and untraceable type of currency system. That is how Monero originated—to provide financial privacy. As Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions are originally traceable, Monero’s co-founders discovered a way to make cryptographic transactions untraceable.
Monero’s history is still under wraps, as very little is known about its background. Among the things we know about Monero are: It started as a small-scale online project in 2012. At that point, Bytecoin became known as one of the first real-life implementations of CryptoNote, an application-layer protocol known to power several decentralized currencies. After Bytecoin underwent a fork in 2014, BitMonero came to the scene as a solitary crypto.
The community shortened the name BitMonero to Monero (XMR), and in 2017, this cryptocurrency saw a major update, transforming it into a renowned privacy coin. Monero has several unique aspects that separate it from other general cryptocurrencies. For starters, Monero gives users complete control over their transactions, as nobody gets to see how and when you’re spending it. XMR is also a fungible and indistinguishable coin because its transaction history remains hidden.
Monero Coin (XMR)Price Trends
Since entering the global cryptocurrency market, Monero has seen several ups and downs. During the current crypto winter, XMR has experienced bearish market sentiment like the other altcoins. Let’s take a look at how Monero price trends have looked in the past 3 years.
2018
Like the majority of altcoins, the value of Monero remained below its peak value for many years. But in January 2018, XMR individual prices peaked along with the rest of the crypto market. Around the same time, the broader market price surged and carried XMR to $469. But when the bullish sentiments disappeared from the market, Monero prices came down to $37 at the end of 2018.
2019
Based on its privacy features and price surges in the past year, Monero saw increased demand and popularity in 2019. A major part of the dark web put the spotlight on XMR, which was recognized as a better version of Bitcoin because it was untraceable. In 2019, XMR became the 13th largest cryptocurrency (by market cap). The maximum value for XMR remained over $119 as the average market capitalization reached $1.1 billion.
2020 and 2021
The year of the global pandemic started off pretty weak for cryptocurrencies as a whole. But the situation quickly recovered from the bearish outlook, and privacy coins like Monero nearly tripled their original value. From March 2020 to May 2021, Monero performed a bull run that added significantly to its overall growth. XMR’s value showed a 1,886% increase and touched its current all-time high of $517.62.
How Does Monero Work?
Monero began as a fork of Bitcoin, as previously stated.But this project quickly advanced and became known as the privacy coin, which represents both decentralization and security. This cryptocurrency makes transactions completely accessible to all users, including those concerned about their privacy. The main contributors of Monero coined a term called the “Electronic Cash Triangle.” It consists of three requirements that any ideal electronic cash must fulfill.
Firstly, it should be electronic; secondly, it should be decentralized; and finally, it must be private. Needless to say, only Monero fulfills all three criteria. Through its cryptography and technology, XMR is capable of going a step further than Bitcoin by obscuring the transactions and keeping users (and their transactions) anonymous. For this reason, Monero is referred to as an anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrency, or simply AEC.
After being introduced on the crypto community’s most popular forum, called Bitcointalk, in 2014, Monero became an open-source project. It utilizes a technology known as RingCT, or Ring Confidential Transactions, discovered in 2015, to keep the transactions completely untraceable and anonymous.
Monero needs stealth addresses, which are nothing but randomly generated one-time addresses, to further protect user privacy. When someone sends XMR to anyone’s stealth address, the payment is transferred to a unique public address.
All of these things allow Monero to never publish a user’s actual wallet address on the blockchain. Furthermore, its fungibility makes it similar to cash in a way that one can return the XMR they own interchangeably. The main Monero developers have also added another layer of security using I2P (or the invisible internet project), a routing system to facilitate applications to communicate directly without outside interference, and Kovri, a C++ implementation of I2P, used to hide your internet traffic.
Monero Key Events
Being a long-running crypto project that first made an appearance back in 2014, Monero’s past, present, and future have many events worth noting. Some of its key events include the following:
- In 2010, on the BitcoinTalk forum, Satoshi discussed the early precursors to ring signatures and stealth addresses. Later on, these two became the pillars of privacy on Monero.
- Nicolas van Saberhagen published the Cryptonote whitepaper in 2014 as an attempt to improve on the Bitcoin protocol and introduce privacy coins. This whitepaper mentioned ASIC-resistant mining and making transactions untraceable using ring signatures.
- Shortly after publishing the Cryptonote whitepaper, a group of unknown developers released Bytecoin using the Cryptonote protocol. But according to the community, almost 82% of the total Bitcoin supply was premined.
- Due to the premined coins, the Bytecoin community agrees on forking the crypto, and thus BitMonero is created. But as the creator fails to collaborate with the community, BitMonero becomes Monero.
- XMR.to is launched in February 2015 as a way to pay for goods that accept Bitcoin but use Monero.This was the first attempt to preserve user privacy within the crypto community.
- Before 2016, Monero was simply a command-line interface. But after the Monero GUI launches, the project sees widespread adoption.
- In 2017, projects like LocalMonero and Monerujo launched to help the community facilitate P2P trades and mobile wallets, respectively.
- The first hardware wallet to support Monero was Lithium Luna v.0.12 in 2018.The next year, Trezor support for XMR arrived along with support for Ledger Nano S.
- One of the main Monero project contributors, crypto developer Riccardo Spagni (“Fluffypony”), stepped down from his leadership role to make Monero more decentralized.
Monero Mining
Monero is similar to Bitcoin because it follows RandomX, which is a community-developed proof-of-work algorithm. It is basically a community-developed algorithm that prevents ASIC mining equipment from dominating the hashrate. Among all the other major altcoins, Monero is a much simpler crypto for mining purposes. One does not need specialized hardware to start mining. The project does not endorse a particular mining pool, software, or hardware. Therefore, one can mine using either a CPU, GPU, or mining pools as per their convenience.
FAQs
How do I buy Monero?
Due to Monero being a privacy coin, several financial authorities have been unfavorable towards this cryptocurrency. But XMR is available to purchase from various crypto exchanges like Binance, OKX, Coinbase, etc.
Who accepts Monero?
A number of domain-hosting and VPN-related companies accept XMR as a payment option for services. Additionally, Travala accepts Monero.
What is the circulating supply of Monero?
As of December 12, 2022, the circulating supply of Monero was 18,212,530 XMR, according to leading crypto data feeds.
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The presented content may include the personal opinion of the author and is subject to market condition. Do your market research before investing in cryptocurrencies. The author or the publication does not hold any responsibility for your personal financial loss.
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