A brief history of Monero.....

Monero (XMR) was developed in 2013 when a developer under the pseudonym Nicolas van Saberhagen, launched the protocol that provides the backbone to Monero, known as Cryptonote. Monero was originally named BitMonero, but its community (wisely) decided to shorten the name to Monero.

A great deal changed in 2016 when XMR became adopted by Alphabay as a legitimate currency for transactions on their site. (Alphabay being a leading darknet market before closure - Other DarkNet markets have opted to use XMR alongside BTC as a form of payment)

So what sets Monero aside from the rest?

1. Fungibility

Fungibility is the ability of an individual currency to be substituted for another without any trace or loss of value. Think £10 vs. 2x £5, if you leant me £10, I would accept 2x £5 in return no questions asked. If however, I leant you my Audi A3, but you returned a VW Golf, comparable yes, but completely 'fungible'? No.

With XMR this happens, as coins are not individually identifiable. This 'funginility' is different in other digital currencies like Bitcoin where transactions are recorded on a blockchain for every individual coin. This makes it possible for the community to know and avoid coins that have been involved in malicious or illegal activities.
Monero has no such issue as the transactions are untraceable. This has made Monero the go-to currency for anyone desiring privacy and anonymity on their transactions.

2. Privacy

This is Monero’s most lucrative advantage over other currencies. Monero is the most private digital currency. It achieves this by using ring signatures which combine a user’s keys with random public keys making it impossible to link a transaction to a user. It released an update to this technology known as RingCT which also hides the amount of transaction. It also uses stealth addresses which are randomly generated on behalf of the recipient making him untraceable. These privacy features are unique to Monero.

3. Better mining process

The efficiency of a currency’s mining process is crucial. Unlike most cryptocurrencies which require the installation of special chips known as ASICs on computers, Monero can be mined on an ordinary computer. This is a significant win for Monero as most of these ASICs are very expensive and use up a lot of power to run. This deters the masses from mining.
Monero, however, doesn’t require any special program. This creates a bigger mass of people interested in mining Monero which will see its popularity increase steadily. This will create a bigger community of users and ultimately a huge demand for Monero which will force the price to shoot up.

4. Expanding block size

The time it takes to produce a block in Monero is averagely two minutes, which is much faster than some currencies such as Bitcoin which takes ten minutes. What makes it stand out, however, is its adaptive expanding ability. It will be able to expand its block sizes automatically to accommodate higher transaction volumes in the future.

Monero is uniquely positioned to offer people the privacy they need online. More people will use it to send secure payments online which will make it highly sought after in the near future.