Coin of the week... Monero!

This is the first installment of a weekly series. I will choose one cryptocurrency every week, and provide in-depth information intended to help you with your investment decisions. As always, of course, this is not investment advice, as I am not a financial advisor. This is simply information to help guide you through your learning process and what makes my pick for coin of the week different from other coins.

This week we will be discussing Monero. For those of you familiar with Monero, you know they are mentioned in the same company as a couple other privacy protocol coins such as ZCash and Verge. I strongly believe that 2018 will be a huge year for coins that implement cutting-edge protocols as it relates to privacy, security, and untraceable cryptocurrency transactions.

There are three key features of the Monero blockchain protocol that allow them to make transactions that occur on their blockchain private and untraceable. First, “Transactions are confirmed by distributed consensus and then immutably recorded on the blockchain. Third-parties do not need to be trusted to keep Monero safe.” Second, “Monero uses ring signatures, ring confidential transactions, and stealth addresses to obfuscate the origins, amounts, and destinations of all transactions.” And last, making Monero transactions completely untraceable, “Sending and receiving addresses as well as transacted amounts are obfuscated by default.”

In terms of liquidity, as we all know, a trusted exchange is necessary when assessing a fair market price based on supply and demand. “Monero is fungible as it is private by default. Which means that Monero cannot be blacklisted by vendors or exchanges due to their association with previous transactions.” Monero has a likeness to gold, in this case, gold is a close example of fungibility, where any 1 oz. of gold of the same grade is worth the same as another 1 oz. of gold, and each is not specifically identified by a serial number or transaction hash.

Now that the total market cap for cryptocurrency has reached an excess of $800 billion this year, cryptocurrency has attracted the attention of government lawmakers, specifically the United States. For those whose interest in cryptocurrency stems from decentralization and storage of wealth and value not tied to a government-backed currency, this could be concerning. If you are part of this group and share these concerns, then Monero might be the coin for you.

Another thing that makes Monero very attractive for 2018 is that it has a very low circulating supply, even less than that of bitcoin. With fewer than 16 million coins, Monero has fewer coins in circulations than 80% of all coins included in the Coin Market Cap top 100. As all of us familiar with the effect of supply and demand and the role it plays in fair market value, this low supply will be a huge factor moving forward increasing the price. As the demand increases as more and more people realize the value of a coin with so much focus on privacy and security.

If anything about Monero has caught your interest, then stay tuned for the rest of the week, each day I will present more in-depth information on Monero, and explain what makes it different from so many of the more than 1500 cryptocurrencies that exist today.

@OriginalWorks

References:
https://getmonero.org/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/