After its launch in April 2014, and throughout most of its history, Monero has progressed, although very slowly and steadily to claim its place among some of the top or main cryptocurrencies on the market. The Monero cryptocurrency has played by far a gradual protagonist over time; unlike the other competing cryptocurrencies which are often seen as being driven more by exaggeration and speculation, Monero, on the other hand, offered better innovation and utility and stayed on the road to continue its march.

History of Monero

Unlike most altcoins, Monero (XMR) was not cloned from the base of the Bitcoin code evolved from Satoshi. However, on the contrary, Monero was invented using its original name of BitMonero as a Hard Fork of Bytecoin (BCN).

However after Monero’s inception, even on forums, social media networks, and other sites where the routine activity of crypto coins took place, Monero was rarely mentioned and was usually discarded as simply yet another boring new coin with a name that was not very attractive and seemed to clumsy. It also lacked a GUI wallet (graphical user interface) and had inappropriate or not enough public relations.

Luckily for Monero, with the help of its trustworthy and reputable followers, Monero finally acquired the reputation it desperately sought; competence and reliability. This process was achieved through the thoughtful statements made by its public developer, Riccardo Spagni, who avoided exaggerating the coin and adopted a more honest approach.

The developers and the community of Monero decided to focus more on perfecting and updating their codes in order to guarantee reliable anonymity. They paid very little attention to superficial factors which is why Monero is now one of the best-known cryptocurrencies. It focuses more on emphasizing decentralization, privacy, anonymity, and scalability. This means that without the use of a private key, nobody can view accounts and transactions at Monero. This approach is varying greatly from the concepts of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

From 2022 there should be 18.4 million Moneros, but their quantity is still expected to increase. An annual inflation rate of 0.87% is planned from the year 2022, which then tends towards 0%.

Investing in Monero – is it safe?

Monero is created in a large open source community, which rallies around the core team of developers. Behind the cryptocurrency is not a company, but a community of technology enthusiasts. This is a bit like the beginning of bitcoin mining. The emphasis at Monero is on anonymous payments, while Bitcoin is more pseudo-anonymous – Bitcoin transactions can be seen (even by authorities). Although this requires a certain technical effort, but is feasible. The effort is similar to the tracking of an Internet user through its IP address.

Monero has therefore added so-called ring signatures and tarn addresses to the protocol, which can disguise transactions, but do not have to – if a user (for example, a company) wants to make his transactions visible, so that no tax office or a police department are suspicious (tax evasion or money laundering), then this is possible through the publication of a ViewKey. But anyone who wants to remain anonymous receives the guarantee with the help of the ring signature. These can be thought of like a big mixer, which the transactions go through and thereby achieve their goal, without their origin is still determinable.

Account balances are also obscured by stealth addresses, which completes Monero’s privacy feature. Currently, Monero transactions are kept anonymous by default. Although ‘still’ does not offer perfect privacy, Monero’s default anonymity level probably exceeds what can be achieved in Bitcoin by the most sophisticated user. With Bitcoin, however, account balances are quite visible with the public key. Even the advanced use of Bitcoin, which uses third-party anonymity services, such as mixers, is generally insufficient to hide the trace of the forensic chain of the blockchain provided by certain companies and tools.

These properties of anonymity make Monero an excellent option for trading the Darknet Market (DNM) and other privacy-sensitive applications. The blockchain is a constantly evolving technology and it should be much more user-friendly and get more technical functionality. According to the current roadmap, these include fluffy blocks, which are intended to reduce the block size and thereby accelerate transactions. Bitcoin uses a similar approach with SegWit.

Investing in Monero – is it worth it?

There are various good reasons to invest in Monero which include:

• The Monero’s inflation rate is steadily decreasing: It should become very valuable in the near future and is already ranked among the largest market capitalization cryptocurrencies.
• There is no block size limit with Monero: Therefore, the scaling debate currently being observed at Bitcoin will not be so fast. Nevertheless, it should not explode, to ensure constant technological innovations.
• At Monero many developers of the active community are involved: That ensures the necessary technological innovation. Although Monero’s mining algorithm is based on the proof of work, it favors decentralized mining. This is also possible on private computers.

Where to Purchase Monero

The Moneros can be purchased on major exchanges such as Bittrex, Kraken, Poloniex, Bitfinex or the specialized Exchange Broker IQ Option. It’s worth it because Monero is a cryptocurrency that puts the focus on privacy. That was initially the biggest motivation for investing in the Bitcoin until it turned out to be pseudo-anonymous at best. However, there is a great need to transfer money anonymously. In addition, there are other good reasons to invest in Monero.

Conclusion

The combination of the above elements makes Monero a true labyrinth when it comes to cryptocurrency safety aspects. A defined link cannot be determined when trading; only the diffuse possibility of linkage is possible. To put it simply, even when using the best forensic techniques of blockchain that can easily be applied to any Monero transaction, they are likely to be inadmissible if presented as evidence.

Even the miners of Monero’s lack the ability to censor transactions. It seems much more likely that there are various other elements involved in any Monero transaction that goes way beyond the scope of Monero’s code that will result in the anonymization of its user.