An introduction to Monero coin (XMR), the leading privacy-focused, open-source cryptocurrency.
Monero is the premier privacy coin cryptocurrency.
A private and decentralised cryptocurrency, unlike what we see on the completely public Bitcoin ledger, Monero has been designed to keep your finances confidential.
It’s these properties that make Monero’s XMR coin the right choice for those who value the privacy of their balance and transactions, above all else.
Monero’s goals are to focus on the development of privacy and security first, with ease of use and efficiency second.
That sentence should tell you everything that you need to know about why you would choose to use a privacy coin such as Monero, over a cryptocurrency that uses a public ledger.
This beginner’s guide to Monero (XMR) will explain how this privacy coin works, whether it’s traceable and what to consider before buying.
Introduction to Monero (XMR)
Monero has a somewhat similar beginning to Bitcoin, with a pseudonymous founder known as Nicolas van Saberhagen, forking the Bytecoin (BCN) chain to launch.
Some going as far as suggesting that Nicolas van Saberhagen is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto himself.
After avoiding identification for this long, I think it’s safe to make the call that we’ll never actually know the identity behind either.
We do however, know that the Monero project began as a grassroots movement in April 2014 with absolutely no pre-mine or VC funding.
Practising what they preach, Monero still remains completely open-source and minable using nothing more than your own CPU.
The XMR Privacy Coin
Looking at the Monero (XMR) coin is an interesting one.
Monero is a privacy coin designed to be spent, not hidden away as a pure store of value like you see with some of the more die hard Bitcoin HODLers.
Either way, the XMR coin still trades on the open market like any other cryptocurrency, the price of which can be seen on the CoinGecko chart below:
With that in mind however, the XMR price is forever going to be open to extreme FUD thanks to its position as a privacy coin.
Monero can and will always be used for illicit activities such as for use on the dark web, but that shouldn’t ever take away from the legitimate privacy issues that cryptocurrencies using public ledgers face.
One example that comes to mind, is trying to spend BTC that had been previously used in a criminal bust.
Heck, something as mundane as using coins in a gambling app could potentially see them flagged by some.
The receiver could choose to blacklist those particular coins, rendering the BTC that you legitimately received unrelated to any past transactions, worthless.
By keeping addresses and transaction histories private, Monero (XMR) avoids these potential issues that are no doubt going to continue to pop up as cryptocurrencies gain greater adoption for everyday use.
Monero’s XMR token offers a level of fungibility that other cryptocurrencies can not.
2 XMR coins can be mutually substituted for each other in a way that 2 dollars or BTC can’t
While 2 different USD notes are technically equal in value, they each carry a unique serial number that can be traced.
We see exactly the same thing with Bitcoin addresses on its public ledger, offering savvy detectives the ability to trace identities via on/off ramps and the like.
Monero’s fungibility is unrivalled and clearly the biggest advantage offered by using XMR to transact over any other unit of account currently out there.
With that being said, we encourage you to now take a deep dive into the rest of our Monero (XMR) guide below and see that the project’s scope is so much wider than the cliche criminal activities that the mainstream media portrays.
Best of probabilities to you.
Direct from the desk of Dane Williams.
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This Monero (XMR) blog is exclusive to leofinance.io.