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Did you know that Monero is considered to be the most popular privacy-focused cryptocurrency on the planet? You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin and Ethereum by now, but there are literally thousands of other coins, and each of them claim to offer different improvements on Bitcoin.

Some have cheaper transactions, some are faster. However, Monero’s (almost) unique selling point is that it is completely anonymous.

That’s right! Thanks to some pretty high-tech cryptography, the sender, receiver, and the amount of Monero sent is impossible to view by anyone else.

For this reason, Monero has found a unique use in evading international sanctions by the likes of North Korea, or as a means of payment on the Dark Web. However, there are also some great reasons for having a private form of money that are not illegal. I’ll explain a few of these later.

Monero: a private digital currency.

Hopefully, this “what is Monero” guide will introduce you to Monero in a way that is easy to understand. Unfortunately, the topic is a rather confusing one, and to fully grasp all Monero’s features, you’d need a strong understanding of cryptography. Since this is an article aimed at beginners, we’ll not spend too much time on these because I don’t want to confuse you!

By the end of this guide, you should have a clear understanding of Monero’s history, some idea of how its privacy features work, how it differs from Bitcoin, the current Monero value how to set up a wallet in the easiest way possible (and how to buy Monero), and the advantages and disadvantages of Monero. Before concluding, I’ll also introduce some ideas about Monero’s future for you to think about.

Before all that though, we need to go all the way back to before Monero even existed!

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  • Bitcoin
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  • Bitcoin
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YES
  • Bitcoin
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YES
  • Bitcoin
  • Ethereum
  • Monero
  • + 700 more
YES
  • Bitcoin
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  • + 700 more

Pros

  • One of the most privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies
  • Very scalable
  • Transactions cannot be linked back to you
  • Respected in the crypto world

Cons

  • A bit difficult to deal with (storage, etc.)
  • Many wallets do not support Monero

The History of Monero

To trace the origins of Monero, we need to look at a different cryptocurrency – Bytecoin.

Bytecoin was launched in the summer of 2012. It was the first digital currency that was written using a technology called CryptoNote.

CryptoNote today is the backbone of most of the privacy-based cryptocurrencies that exist. This includes Monero. The privacy of CryptoNote coins is ensured by grouping public keys together. By combining several keys in a single transaction, it's impossible to tell who sent it!

The use of these “ring signatures” to sign transactions provides the anonymity of the CryptoNote technology.

Bytecoin was a good effort at an anonymous cryptocurrency. However, there were a few issues with its initial distribution. When it launched, it turned out that 80% of the coins that would ever be mined were already in existence.

Monero: Monero's Core Team.

This lead a group of seven developers to fork the Bytecoin blockchain and the new currency would be known as Bitmonero. This was eventually shortened to simply Monero which is Esperanto for "coin".

Of the seven developers who originally created Monero, five of them decided that they would keep their identities secret. Only two of these Monero developers are known about - Riccardo Spagni (the main developer today) and David Latapie. Riccardo Spagni is also known by the nickname "Fluffypony".

What Makes Monero Different?

There is a lot about Monero that is similar to many other cryptocurrencies. It's an open-source project that is entirely permission-less. This second feature is potentially world-changing. There is no authority that can stop you from using a cryptocurrency.

The Complete Guide to Monero Cryptocurrency

This means that those without access to modern banking facilities can take part in a digital economy in the way they never could before. All they need is an internet connection and a device to connect to it. There are literally millions of people around the world that lack access to banking facilities but have smartphones and local Wi-Fi hotspots. India is a prime example of a country with many of these "unbanked" citizens.

Privacy

The main thing that gives Monero value is its privacy features. No one can link you to a Monero cryptocurrency transaction. This makes it a favorite currency for those who are concerned with privacy for a variety of reasons. Not all these reasons will be illegal, although some obviously will be.

Imagine that you were a homosexual living with a very religious family. It might be difficult for you to meet people in a similar position as you. Whilst certainly not illegal, the stigma attached to being gay in certain religious groups could drive a young person to depression, or worse. A currency like Monero could be used to pay for social or "matchmaker" type applications. In such a situation, privacy is a necessity even though no law is being broken.

There are also instances that a law might be being broken, but it's such an unjust one, that an otherwise law-abiding citizen is driven to so-called criminality. I'll use another made up, but believable example to show this. Imagine you and your partner just had a child together. When your baby was born, they had severe epilepsy.

Monero: what Monero has that others don't.

After putting your child through a hellish schedule of traditional medicine – many pills several times a day, you saw a news report about medicinal cannabis. A family in the same situation as you are living across an imaginary line on a map were legally allowed to give their child strong doses of cannabis extracts. This seemed to instantly cure the epileptic seizures in the infant.

It seems wrong to be denied access to such a medicine, based on the location that you were born. Monero could help you in such situations, too.

Fungibility

Another very important feature of the Monero cryptocurrency that relates to its privacy is that it is entirely fungible. Don't worry, I'll explain what I mean by this!

It's possible to track Bitcoin transactions from one user to another. Depending on how the user uses Bitcoin, you might not be able to tell their identity, but you can follow each Bitcoin from address to address.

This means that a user can tell if a certain Bitcoin was involved in a crime. This isn't an ideal quality for the money!

The Complete Guide to Monero Cryptocurrency

Let's look at an example to prove this. Say you sold a completely legal item on a platform like Open Bazaar, and you received Bitcoin as a payment. However, it turns out that the Bitcoin you received was previously used in a drug deal. For you, that might not be an issue. However, when you try to spend it somewhere else, the person receiving it could decide that they don't want this "tainted" coin.

Thanks to the advanced privacy features of Monero, no one can tell which transactions each coin was actually involved in. It would be entirely impossible to link a single Monero coin to a past crime. There is no transaction history associated with any Monero coins. This means they are fungible!

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Dynamic Scalability

Another area that Monero tried to improve on Bitcoin is in terms of its scalability. Put simply, scalability just means how well the network can grow in relation to demand. Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are by definition limited in size.

For much of its past, Bitcoin has had a 1MB block-size limit. This means that only 1MB of transaction data can fit into each of the blocks that are mined every 10 minutes on the Bitcoin network.

Unfortunately, when there are many users trying to make transactions at the same time using Bitcoin, the blockchain gets filled with transaction data. Those transactions that can't fit into a block must wait for a miner to include them.

Since miners prefer to include transactions with the largest fees attached, if the network is very busy, it encourages people to increase the fees to get their transactions included. This is what happened in the Spring of 2017 to the Bitcoin blockchain. Some transactions were actually requiring a $30+ fee just to be validated!

The Complete Guide to Monero Cryptocurrency

Monero is different. There is no "pre-set" block size limit. Whilst this does allow for more transaction data in each block, there is a downside – spammers can fill the blockchain was transactions. This would make huge blocks.

However, the Monero developers introduced a block reward-penalty system. The median size of the last 100 blocks is taken. If the new block that the miners are working on exceeds the median of the previous hundred blocks, the block reward is reduced. This discourages spam transactions, since miners won’t mine blocks that are subject to such a large penalty if it’s no longer profitable for them to do so.

The block reward will never drop below 0.3 XMR, making Monero a disinflationary currency: the inflation will be roughly 1% in 2023 and go down forever, but the nominal inflation will stay at 0.3 XMR per minute. This means that there will always be an incentive for miners to mine Monero and thus keeping the blockchain secure, with or without a fee market.


Monero

ASIC Resistance

Another perceived issue with Bitcoin is that mining the network is now only profitable using specialized mining equipment. These systems use components known as Application Specific Integrated Circuit chips. They’re expensive and this means that only the richest can set up mining operations.

Monero differs. It uses an alternate hashing algorithm to Bitcoin called CryptoNight. CryptoNight uses a lot of advanced features to make the production of ASIC chips suitable for mining Monero unprofitable.

The specifics are a little complex for this introduction to the Monero currency but all you really need to know is that Monero can be profitably mined using both CPUs and GPUs. This should mean that the currency has the potential to be even more decentralized than Bitcoin.

Multiple Keys

Monero uses a different system of keys to the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum. In these currencies, there is just one pair of keys – a public key and a private key. Monero uses a public view key, a private view key, and both public and private spend key.

  • Only stealth public addresses are used, and only public view keys are generated..
  • For checking the blockchain and verifying that funds have been received, a private view key is needed.
  • To verify the signature on a transaction requires a public spend key.
  • Private spend keys are used to create outgoing transactions.
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Monero and it's Eventual Supply

Unlike Bitcoin, there isn’t a fixed number of Monero tokens that will ever be mined. The currency is ever-so-slightly inflationary. There will initially be 18.5 million coins, following this the supply will increase by around 0.87% in the first year.

This percentage lowers each year. It’s estimated that it will take 117 years to reach double the initial distribution. For this figure to double again, it will take 234 years.

Monero and the Wider Cryptocurrency Market

The current price for a single XMR coin is $101.25. The currency is the 12th most popular in terms of total market capitalization.

Below, I’ve included the graph of the Monero coin’s performance since it was launched. As you can see, like most cryptocurrencies, the value spiked around January 2018 and has fallen back quite a bit since its all-time high of $480.

Monero: Monero's price chart.

How to Store Monero

Storing Monero used to be quite a struggle. You would need to run the wallet using command lines. Although this made you feel like you were hacking into some secret government database, it wasn’t exactly user-friendly!

Fortunately, there is now a much easier way to store Monero!

First head to www.mymonero.com.

1. Click “create account”.

How to create an account on Monero website

2. Read and understand the page about the importance of securely storing your private key login information.

3. Write down your private login key.

4. Type the private login key into the box below the key. This is to check you actually did make a note of it. The one pictured below is an empty account. You can check it by all means but you will be wasting your time!

Monero: private login key.

That’s it! You’ve just created your first Monero wallet. Now, I’m going to presume you want to put some XMR coins in the wallet. I’ve outlined the steps to do this below:

Storing XMR

1. Make a note of the address at the top of the Account overview screen.

Monero: wallet address.

2. Go to the exchange account that you want to send you to want to send Monero from.

3. Enter the address you just made a note of under the exchange’s withdrawal section.

4. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the withdrawal. Some exchanges might ask you to confirm that you are making the withdrawal by clicking a link in an email.

5. If you’re receiving Monero from a friend, simply send them the address and they should know what to do with it!

If you want to send Monero from your wallet, I’ve provided the instructions to do this as well.

Sending XMR

1. First, click “Send”.

Monero

2. Enter the address that you wish to send Monero to. You will get this from either an exchange, a contact (friend or colleague, etc.), or any service that accepts Monero as a payment option.

3. Type the amount you want to send in the box labeled “Amount”.

4. Select how private you want the transaction to be. The greater the “ring size”, the higher the transaction fee will have to be.

5. Hit “Send Payment”.

That’s it, that’s all there is to using the MyMonero wallet. I think you’ll agree it’s much easier than wrestling with the command prompt wallet. However, you won’t win many elite hacker points for using MyMonero!

Now, having said all of that, you should also be aware of the fact that, from late November 2018, you are able to store Monero (rather, integrate the Monero wallet) in one of the most popular hardware cryptocurrency wallets - the Ledger Nano X. This makes both the storage, and the purchasing aspects concerning Monero easier, faster, and much smoother!

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Monero

thumbs up PROs
One of the most private cryptocurrencies.
Transactions are impossible to link to a person.
Transactions are impossible to trace.
The blockchain doesn’t have a limit. The dynamic scalability of it means that fees shouldn’t end up huge even when it is being used a lot.
It’s possible to choose who can see your transactions. For example, if you wanted to prove your ownership of a certain amount of Monero for tax purposes, you can share your private view key with your countries tax authority. This makes it less likely that regulators will try to ban Monero.
A great team of committed developers works on the project.

thumbs down CONs
Despite being ASIC resistant, there is still a large degree of centralization of miners on Monero. Roughly 43% of the hash rate is controlled by just three pools.
There are not many wallets that have been developed for Monero. You won’t find support for Monero on any hardware wallets or multi-crypto solutions like Jaxx.
To store Monero in a way that is properly secure is much tougher than most other cryptocurrencies. This might be why it hasn’t been more widely adopted by the wider community.
Being as Monero isn’t based on Bitcoin, it is harder to develop applications that interact with its blockchain.

Monero In The Future

In a world where absolutely nothing seems to offer genuine privacy anymore, there is certainly a call for such privacy-focused currencies as Monero. I listed both a legal example where private money was a good thing earlier, as well as an illegal, but morally defensible one (although you should never break the law!).

Monero has the potential to allow people to transact almost instantly across the planet without the need of permission from any authority. In countries with oppressive governments, this could be used as a very powerful tool in the pursuit of freedom.

That said, criminals also appreciate the privacy features of Monero. Dark Web markets can be accessed by anyone and will sell a truly shocking array of drugs, weapons, and other criminal items. Monero has quickly found a place as the currency of choice on these illicit websites.

Not only that but Monero has also been used by governments such as North Korea’s to get around international sanctions. For both of these reasons, it is very possible that Monero could be attacked by governments who are less keen on the idea of a completely private means of payment for use by anyone from child pornographers and drug dealers, to international terrorist organizations and human traffickers.

How successful such a crackdown on Monero would be will be an interesting test of cryptocurrencies’ “anti-fragile” properties.

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Conclusions

So - that was our guide on Monero. I hope you learned a lot more about the most popular privacy-focused cryptocurrency. I tried to keep the technical stuff to a minimum. If you’re interested in learning more about any of the features that make Monero anonymous, there are plenty of great resources online. Beware though, it will get complicated very quickly!

In this guide, we’ve covered a whole lot. So, before I sign off, let’s have a recap. You should have learned:

  • What is Monero?
  • Monero’s history.
  • What Monero is useful for.
  • A little about how it achieves its privacy and anonymity.
  • How to set up and use a Monero wallet in the easiest (although not most secure) way.
  • How Monero differs from Bitcoin.
  • The current and past Monero value.
  • The advantages and disadvantages of using Monero.
  • The future of Monero.

I hope you found this guide to Monero interesting and educational! Monero has the potential to become a very powerful tool of resistance, as well as a handy payment method for various goods and services.

Speaking of which, if you want to make payments with Monero, you'll probably need to hold some of the cryptocurrency, first! If you're looking to purchase Monero, one of the best places where you could do so is Binance. All that you'd need to do is:

  1. Register on the site;
  2. Go through the verification process;
  3. Choose Monero (XMR), your payment method, and make the payment!
  4. The only thing left to do then is to store your new coins in a secure wallet.

With all your new-found knowledge, what do you think about Monero? Does this project have a future, or will the governments of the world try to entirely ban it? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject!

The content published on this website is not aimed to give any kind of financial, investment, trading, or any other form of advice. BitDegree.org does not endorse or suggest you to buy, sell or hold any kind of cryptocurrency. Before making financial investment decisions, do consult your financial advisor.

About Article's Experts & Analysts

By Aaron S.

Editor-In-Chief

Having completed a Master’s degree in Economics, Politics, and Cultures of the East Asia region, Aaron has written scientific papers analyzing the differences between Western and Collective forms of capitalism in the post-World War II era. W...
Aaron S. , Editor-In-Chief
Having completed a Master’s degree in Economics, Politics, and Cultures of the East Asia region, Aaron has written scientific papers analyzing the differences between Western and Collective forms of capitalism in the post-World War II era.
With close to a decade of experience in the FinTech industry, Aaron understands all of the biggest issues and struggles that crypto enthusiasts face. He’s a passionate analyst who is concerned with data-driven and fact-based content, as well as that which speaks to both Web3 natives and industry newcomers.
Aaron is the go-to person for everything and anything related to digital currencies. With a huge passion for blockchain & Web3 education, Aaron strives to transform the space as we know it, and make it more approachable to complete beginners.
Aaron has been quoted by multiple established outlets, and is a published author himself. Even during his free time, he enjoys researching the market trends, and looking for the next supernova.

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Recent Monero User Reviews

Dustin

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
18/07/2024

monero is da hit

definitely a game-changer in the world of cryptocurrencies

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bernice

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
06/09/2024

opportunity...

i might as well invest in monero...

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Flenn Cruz

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
10/08/2024

<3

my faveeeeeee <3 <3 <3

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LeonaSutton

4.0/5.0 - Monero User
06/07/2024

love it

monero just gives its users a much-needed sense of security and reliability - could be cheaper though

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fishinthesea

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
20/08/2024

scalability ftw

im a programmer and one of the things i most admire in projects is how scalable they are - it rly shows how good the ppl behind it are!

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Audrey45

3.0/5.0 - Monero User
29/09/2024

mmm

dunno dont like

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Harper Romero

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
16/08/2024

Anonymous, finally!

Its anonymous nature is what sets Monero apart from other cryptos! It really delivers what it promisses!

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Rebecca Davidson

4.0/5.0 - Monero User
12/07/2024

Good Project

However, I prefer others

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Lucas_Barb

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
21/08/2024

dunno

i keep thinking that ppl could use monero for bad purposes :/ its anonymous approach is nice, but for whom?

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blacklion333

5.0/5.0 - Monero User
13/09/2024

Nice!!!!

A blockchain technology that ENSURES that transactions CAN NOT AT ALL be traced back to their source???? This is REALLY good!!!

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FAQ

Is Monero worth investing in?

As you can probably imagine, this isn't an easy question to answer - it depends on many different factors. You should always consult a financial advisor about such matters, and do a lot of research regarding the cryptocurrency and the technology behind it. On top of that, you should also be sure to pick the best exchange to purchase Monero from - Binance seems to be one of the more popular alternatives.

Which is better - Monero or Bitcoin?

Without a doubt, Bitcoin is the most popular and well-known cryptocurrency in the world. That said, Monero offers a lot of different benefits - many of them Bitcoin does not possess. A good example would be the fact that Monero is considered to be a completely private cryptocurrency, while Bitcoin transactions can actually be traced back to you, no matter if you use the most popular exchanges out there, or some completely unknown ones.

How to pick the best crypto exchange for yourself?

Picking out the best crypto exchange for yourself, you should always focus on maintaining a balance between the essential features that all top crypto exchanges should have, and those that are important to you, personally. For example, all of the best exchanges should possess top-tier security features, but if you're looking to trade only the main cryptocurrencies, you probably don't really care too much about the variety of coins available on the exchange. It's all a case-by-case scenario!

Which cryptocurrency exchange is best for beginners?

Reading through various best crypto exchange reviews online, you're bound to notice that one of the things that most of these exchanges have in common is that they are very simple to use. While some are more straightforward and beginner-friendly than others, you shouldn't encounter any difficulties with either of the top-rated exchanges. That said, many users believe that KuCoin is one of the simpler exchanges on the current market.

What is the difference between a crypto exchange and a brokerage?

In layman's terms, a cryptocurrency exchange is a place where you meet and exchange cryptocurrencies with another person. The exchange platform (i.e. Binance) acts as a middleman - it connects you (your offer or request) with that other person (the seller or the buyer). With a brokerage, however, there is no “other person” - you come and exchange your crypto coins or fiat money with the platform in question, without the interference of any third party. When considering cryptocurrency exchange rankings, though, both of these types of businesses (exchanges and brokerages) are usually just thrown under the umbrella term - exchange. This is done for the sake of simplicity.

Are all the top cryptocurrency exchanges based in the United States?

No, definitely not! While some of the top cryptocurrency exchanges are, indeed, based in the United States (i.e. KuCoin or Kraken), there are other very well-known industry leaders that are located all over the world. For example, Binance is based in Tokyo, Japan, while Bittrex is located in Liechtenstein. While there are many reasons for why an exchange would prefer to be based in one location over another, most of them boil down to business intricacies, and usually have no effect on the user of the platform.

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