“The criteria of liberty”: Is Monero really the best coin ever?

Undoubtedly, the crypto market is to take great strides forward. The world’s largest investment funds are actively investing in various crypto assets. And if we talk about promising cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum immediately come to mind, but many investors prefer to buy fewer hype products. And one of them is Monero.

You can call me a Monero Maximalist

One of Monero’s big fans is Redditor user OwlHugAustin. According to him, it all started with an interview with John McAfee, an anti-virus software entrepreneur, when he was on the run from US authorities.

“The businessman mentioned all the privacy and security Bitcoin limitations and other currencies had; it all made sense to me. We’re supposed to use this stuff as a currency of the people, where we can trade and store value without government permission or intrusion in our lives. True financial liberty,” he said.

And according to the author, he found all this stuff in Monero, among which are:

• decentralization;
• privacy,
• fungibility;
• and the inability for it to be inflated by government printing.

“Monero is security. Whatever dystopian future awaits us, one that holds Monero holds freedom. Until then, keep your spending private as with cash,” said Redditor PM_ME_YOUR_HONEY.

But is the coin really that good?

Monero: pros & cons

Monero is considered one of the most secure cryptocurrencies but has a mixed reputation. On the one hand, its elusiveness guarantees safe payments, but on the other hand, it becomes a convenient tool for illegal transactions.

Monero was invented in Spain in 2014; the coin’s “engine” is an algorithm called CryptoNote an application layer protocol that powers several decentralized privacy-oriented digital currencies from another cryptocurrency that appeared in 2012 — Bytecoin.

Bytecoin was anonymous, including the team of creators. At the same time, the product was of excellent quality: thoroughly elaborated and in line with modern realities. The only problem was that the public accepted the coin not immediately, but only at the end of the emission, or rather at the moment when more than 80% of all bytecoins were mined.

The solution came quickly; an initiative group emerged from the team of developers and organized a hard fork, which resulted in the birth in April 2014 of a new project BitMonero, the name of which was later simplified to Monero.

Until the summer of 2014, the project token was called MRO, and then it was renamed XMR. The developers of Monero did without pre-mining: they did not release a good product in large quantities to resell it in the case of a surge in popularity. In addition, the coin’s creators initially tried to close all, not publishing its code.

A few months after its launch, the Monero cryptocurrency was attacked by hackers. This was a signal to the developers, who decided to carry out special work to improve the cryptocurrency core.

So, let’s consider the pros and cons of cryptocurrency.

Pros

• Affordable mining. Coins can be mined even on equipment with low performance.
• Protection against data leaks.
• The anonymity of purchases. Many users worry about disclosing personal information when paying for “sensitive” goods. Monero solves this problem.

Cons

• The anonymity of Monero is not absolute. In particular, former CIA and U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden criticized the cryptocurrency and questioned the anonymity of Monero.
• Pressure from regulators. Monero coin is in the crosshairs of supervisors, and some countries are banning it. However, there will likely be services not subject to regulatory pressure.
• The lack of control provides a huge space for maneuver for criminals. In the long run, this can affect the economy because the flow of anonymous cryptocurrencies is difficult to control.
• Large transactions. A single entry in the Monero blockchain “weighs” eight times more than a Bitcoin transaction.
• Vulnerability to “Attack 51%”. If a centralized group of miners gains control of the network, they can de-anonymize some transactions. You can read more about crypto hacking here.

We can conclude that Monero is a reliable cryptocurrency, but in other ways, it is not perfect. Therefore, if security is the most important thing for you, you can consider it one of the coins in your portfolio. Otherwise, it is better to think or, as they say, do your research.

What do you think of Monero?