Monero: #1 True Digital Cash Replacement
Did you know Bitcoin exposes all the naughty little details of every transaction you’ve ever made on the blockchain forever!?
Yeah bro.
Things like privacy and complete ownership — that’s where’s Monero ($XMR) comes into the picture; it’s a currency system that’s all about privacy.
“You mean I can still use crypto without anyone knowing?!” Yes, you might be thinking it’s too good to be true, so let’s answer your burning question: Is Monero a good investment?
What is Monero?
With Monero, you become your own bank. It’s untraceable, anonymous, and totally secure – a full-fledged privacy system that keeps you safe. This cryptocurrency boasts an encrypted mechanism that ensures every transaction you make of the currency is unlinkable and untraceable.
So this means that no one can figure out how much dough you have from just looking up your public wallet address on the Monero blockchain (we’re looking at you, Bitcoin). And no one would also be able to scan through your transactions to figure out who’s sending you money and who you’re sending money to — unless you choose to reveal the details.
Monero is private, efficient, and one of the best replacements for cash.
The project started when a shady coin called Bytecoin from CryptoNote got forked into becoming Bitmonero. The coin demonstrated scalability with no limit in distribution and new blocks being mined every 2 minutes.
Who is behind Monero?
In the white paper, Monero is credited to a person named Nicolas van Saberhagen whom no one actually knows what he looks like, where he resides, or if he’s still active to date. He’s been hastily compared to Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, due to the similarity in anonymity and overall endgame in the world of crypto. On the Monero website’s official About Us page, you can see that it credits thankful_for_today as the founder, further lengthening the gap in figuring out who actually made this cryptocurrency.
Other sources also cite that the Monero team has 7 people, with 5 staying anonymous. The 2 who decided to reveal themselves to the public regarding these crowdfunded and open source projects are David Latapie and Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni.
How it works
Unlike bitcoin’s transparent transactions, Monero works to be as opaque as possible. Though bitcoin’s transactions are secure, anyone can view the transaction with a public key, aka wallet address. A public key is an “address,” a log of all transactions and current balances that people can send out whenever they want to view a bitcoin transaction.
This is where Monero strives to be different and better at the same time. One of the devs, FluffyPony, heavily utilizes the need of The Electronic Cash Triangle. What this model proposes is that any electronic cash media should be:
- Electronic
- Decentralized
- Private
Monero succeeds in all three aspects.
Luckily, in today’s landscape, if you want to truly anonymize a transaction you need three mechanisms:
- Ring Signatures protects the identity of the sender
- Stealth Addresses protects the recipients’ identity
- Ring Confidential Transactions (or RingCT) anonymizes the transaction details
Ok, don’t fall asleep just yet! We promise it’s worth the read.
What are ring signatures?
TLDR: A ring signature is like hanging with a group of friends where you’re the only real person, and your friends are imaginary. It’s a lot like your Facebook profile (zing!)
Wait, what?
A super cool security feature of ring signatures is the use of imaginary friends (decoys) that make it computationally impossible to determine your identity in the group.
Simply put, Ring signatures hide your identity in a group, making it difficult to tell which member of the group owns the signature.
Example: Let’s say an employee of a large organization; perhaps a government worker discovers something they think the public should be aware of. They might choose to leak the document to inform citizens while ensuring their true identity is hidden from repercussions but can still be traceable to the organization as proof of authority.
Monero uses multiple ring signatures, which makes it highly improbable to reveal your identity as the sender. Decoys Lois, Decoys!!
The only caveat with ring signatures is they require each decoy to have common denominations. More on this later…
What are stealth addresses?
Imagine having to create a new bank account every time you want to send money. Anonymity has its price.
Today, it’s easier to get a burner phone instead.
Monero creates a one-time-key in every transaction. Each one-time-key also generates a one-time public address called a stealth address so you can send money anonymously.
…like making a call on a burner phone.
From there, your recipient would have their private spend key look for transactions directed at them, in which the key would create a one-time public key that can be used to receive Monero.
Want to know the best part about all of this?
You never have to worry about all these dainty complexities. That’s because Monero takes care of all of this for you.
But Monero has since moved on to Multi-layered Linkable Spontaneous Anonymous Group signatures, or Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT for short).
Editors note: Omg, who comes up with naming this stuff?!
Let’s explore how RingCT works to protect you.
What are Ring Confidential Transactions ?
As we previously discussed, both ring signatures and stealth addresses work together to hide both sender and recipient identities.
But their transactions can still be publicly viewed by curious onlookers.
Due to this gap, Monero has taken further steps to secure your privacy.
The activation of RingCT in September 2017 was one of its most significant updates to Monero’s protocol. The adoption of RingCT has unquestionably improved the way Monero sources decoys because it eliminates gaps within CryptoNote’s algorithm. More on this later…
Tokenomics
Still on the fence on whether Monero is right for you? Well, here are five key advantages of why you should invest in Monero:
Complete Ownership
Given the level of privacy Monero boasts, you know you have full control over every aspect of it – from how you spend to how you receive. You are in control.
It’s fungible
Simply put, Monero can be used with other goods and assets. This one of its bigger advantages against other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, in which the ever so famous cryptocurrency’s lack of privacy destroys its fungibility. When bitcoin is used for dangerous or illegal transactions, these dirty coins hold a different value than coins that are never used for such activities. But because Monero is private, it represents a truer medium of exchange.
Some might argue that nothing can taint it as a currency.
Dynamic scalability
Most cryptocurrencies struggle with the existence of block size limits, only allowing for a certain maximum amount of a certain currency to be produced. Monero is different, as it has no pre-set size limit as it makes use of a free block size mechanism. A block reward penalty is put into place not to clog the system with large blocks, making it mostly foolproof.
It’s resistant to Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) mining
ASIC mining costs are too high for it to be functional for Monero. So it just isn’t worth it for any miner to waste computing power on. This ensures there’s a defense mechanism in place to prevent a few players from owning the mining power and eventually centralize the rewards (we’re looking at you, bitcoin).
As the Monero system was derived from CryptoNote, it also used CryptoNight, a hashing software that can build a decentralized currency system that’s fair to every user.
It offers complete anonymity
To fully maximize the encryption and privacy Monero provides, it offers ring signatures to users to make transactions more secure and private.
Pros & Cons
How/where to join the community
Recent news or events
In an article published on November 12, it was stated that Monero was Sybil attacked, in which an army of nodes attacked the $XMR network for 10 days straight. The attackers desperately tried to exploit a bug to have their malicious nodes end up in an honest node’s peer list. Despite the attack being unique and first of its kind, Monero’s privacy mechanism stayed strong, proving the attack unsuccessful.
Our thoughts/Opinions
The level of promise this specific currency holds is astounding, especially with the amount of new-age technology it comes with. It feels as if it’s something straight from the future, making it a highly viable idea to invest in. Even though it’s still in its early stages, if you give it a little time, you’ll find the wait worth your while.
How-to guide on buying the token (Uniswap)
Getting yourself some $XMR is actually not that hard.
- The first thing you have to do is go to the Uniswap App
- Make sure your wallet is connected to Uniswap.
- From here, you can choose a token that you want to convert to $XMR. You can choose it from their drop-down menu or search even faster by using their search bar.
- Check if the desired amounts are correct, along with the gas fees intact. Once satisfied, proceed with the transaction.
Yay! You now have yourself some $XMR!
