In South Korea, The Winter Olympic Games, where the world’s best athletes competed on one of the Asia’s coldest stages, has just ended. Historically, athletes who win the Olympic Games were given a laurel wreath as a symbol of victory, and were regarded as heroes in their region. With the insertion of the Olympic Games in modern times, the type of award was modified: following the connotation of value acquired by the noble metals, the symbolism of winner is referred to gold; silver to the runner up; and bronze, a metal structure based on copper and tin, to the third place.
In the Cryptoworld, thousands of cryptocurrencies are fighting for the top spot. And, if Bitcoin is currently the undeniable king and winner and Litecoin is considered the reliable alternative, who can be considered the bronze medal in the Cryptolympics?
Monero and the quest for privacy
If you believe that Bitcoin is private, stop now and think again. Be like people who have access to your public address, it is possible that they follow your transactions.
As people widely discuss that if we want to achieve true decentralization, privacy is necessary. Most oppositions argue that they have nothing to hide, but even then there is the risk of being very, very transparent, showing much more of people’s financial lives than anyone wants to show. In Bitcoin’s environment, all transaction, balance and access information is available with the public wallet addresses. There is a popular article from Dionysis Zindros [1], Cryptography/Blockchains PhD candidate, who explains how your Bitcoin transactions can be mapped. Being transparent like this can be helpful if you are a non-profit organization or a charity, but not everyone wants it.
Here comes the Monero ($XMR) to the rescue. Monero is a decentralized cryptocurrency, meaning it is secure digital cash operated by a network of users [2]. So far nothing different than Bitcoin. But what makes it special is that Monero is that this project has community-driven project in where most of the devs are working voluntarily, and it has focus on privacy and fungibility. And these characteristics explains the recent explosion in value: Monero pumped from US$ 48 in August, 2017 to US$ 350 in March, 2018. An incredible 700% pump for a 6-month period.
Why Monero deserves a place in the podium?
Monero uses ring signatures and ring confidential transactions to obfuscate the amounts, origins, and destinations of all transactions. It gives you all the benefits of a decentralized currency without compromising from Privacy [3]. Moreover, why do we need financial privacy? Some arguments are:
- True decentralization (otherwise centralization can be forced upon us through courts of law)
- Evidence illustrates privacy benefits the honest
- Supported by long-history of cypherpunk philosophy
- The community believes that private crypto currencies will dominate in a near future
Besides that, Monero is valuable because it is fungible. Fungibility is the property of a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. This means that all coins are worth the same value and are mutually interchangeable. And, according to Monero’s dev team and Monero Whitepaper [4], fungibility is the most important key feature for this coin. If Monero does not make any big fundamental changes in the future, it is unlikely they will ever get blacklisted by exchanges and vendors.
The privacy come at a cost. The Monero blockchain is huge. Right now, it is 43.40 GB, according to https://bitinfocharts.com/monero/ and it does not stop growing. In addition, Monero may not be competitive when it comes to rates. For this reason, it can become a currency for special activities. For example, when you really want to pay more for extra privacy in your transactions.
Conclusion and Tendencies for Monero
Monero’s price has risen more than 65% in one month, but most of the technical analysts says that there are some nice price developments. Monero remain overly bullish, buyers are firmly in charge and are actually the driving force behind this resurgence.
Recently, XMR broke out of the inverse H&S, a movement that creates expectations that it can also broke above $390 we should be good for ATH. There are also some good news for $XMR HODLers. MoneroV Airdrop hard fork approaches block 1529810 around March 14. XMR HODLers will get x10 airdrop of XMV coins. You must have them in Monero wallet at snapshot time.
Finally, if you believe privacy is necessary for cryptocurrency, $XMR might be a good fit for you. Seems like they have one of the best privacy feature in the market. Unlike some of the competitors, like Dash or ZCash, you cannot turn off the privacy on XMR, the community is huge and they support the project. Monero was even one of the four cryptocurrencies chosen for the one and only crypto animated cartoon ever produced: the introduction of the Magical Crypto Friends show. It may not be financially relevant, but it is evidence that Monero has become a mainstream currency.
Medvec et al. (1995) studied the effects of counterfactual thinking on the Olympics: The study showed that athletes who won the bronze medal were significantly happier with their winning than those athletes who won the silver medal. It seems like these same effects apply to cryptocurrency world: in the Cryptolympics battle to be the champion, Monero is quiet and happy staying with the Bronze Medal.
Market Summary
In a nutshell, Monero price for today is US$340.64. It has a current circulating supply of 15.8 Million coins and a total market cap of $5,512,911,240 USD.
It is a red morning for the Top Cryptocurrencies. By the time of this publication and according to coinlib.io, the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies market values are:
1 Bitcoin $10,512.86
2 Ethereum $783.17
3 Ripple $0.892
4 Bitcoin Cash $1,155.32
5 Litecoin $189.25
6 Cardano $0.260
7 NEO $105.60
8 Stellar $0.325
9 Monero $340.64
10 EOS $6.85
$XMR $LTC $BTC $ETH $BCH $XRP
DISCLAIMER
This digital platform does not provide investment, tax, or legal advice. None of the content published in this platform constitutes a recommendation that any particular cryptocurrency (or cryptocurrency token/asset/index), portfolio of cryptocurrencies, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. And, in the end, we always recommend DYOW (Do Your Own Research).
References
[1] http://corelab.ntua.gr/athecrypt2016/slides/Monero_zindros.pdf [2] https://getmonero.org/ [3] https://medium.com/@cryptorand/interview-with-monero-team-xmr-9c94e56ad912 [4] https://getmonero.org/resources/research-lab/
