Monero (XMR) Privacy Coin Celebrates Five Years. What’s Next?

The Monero (XMR) privacy coin has recently celebrated five years since the project’s genesis block was first mined in 2014. Earlier this year, Bitcoin blockchain also celebrated its 10^th anniversary, and similar to the discussions about Bitcoin, Monero’s fifth birthday will surely make the XMR community reflect on the cryptocurrency’s progression so far.

The privacy crypto has advanced a lot since it was launched, and not only became popular, but also gained technical prowess, now Monero being the cryptoeconomy’s 12th largest project per market capitalization.

Although the XMR price is around $68 USD, and down from the all-time high of $495 (January 2018), it is still up 7,000% in the last three years.

The coin has recently rose thanks to the digital privacy concerns, and it was noted on XMR’s birthday by binaryFate, Monero core team member:

“Monero gives you control over the privacy of your digital financial transactions. This privacy is a fundamental human right for individuals and a competitive essential for businesses.”

Last year in fall, the developers activated Bulletproofs (zero-knowledge proofs – ZKPs) on the blockchain, making the project advance. This way, XMR transactions were made 80% smaller through the latest development, making them very cheap.

XMR’s Competition is Growing

Founded on a fork of Bytecoin, and also receiving Bulletproofs, Monero’s blockchain privacy features are now the most advanced in the cryptoeconomy. But this also made regulators eye Monero, knowing that it could make money laundering possible, which is why some exchanges did not list XMR and turned to other privacy coins like Zcash that offer two types of transactions – shielded or non-shielded.

But XMR could see a growing competition. We are talking about the new Zether and Nightfall protocols that can be used on the Ethereum network to hide the details of transactions, and Bitcoin that wants to use the Taproot technology for the same reason. This means Monero’s market share will be split. However, it does not mean that the coin will have no future.