Monero (XMR) Live Price

Monero (XMR) was released in 2014 as a private alternative peer-to-peer payment system and cryptocurrency. Unlike most early altcoins, Monero does not operate on an alternative version of the original Bitcoin blockchain protocol, but rather operates on a new protocol that allows it to mask certain key payment details from the public. Therefore, it has become the digital currency of choice for users looking for an anonymous payment system. The value of Monero increased rapidly in 2016 as it came into public awareness, and even after the boom and bust of all crypto coins in 2018 it remains at an elevated price level and a top 20 coin by market cap.

Monero operates as a private ledger by obscuring the sender and receiver of any peer-to-peer payment using the cryptocurrency. Each individual coin is also interchangeable with any other, unlike the case with most digital currencies, so transactions cannot be tracked by observing the path of certain coins. There was a privacy issue that arose because some people were able to track transactions by looking at the volume of trades, but this issue has since been addressed.

Monero is also known as an easy to mine coin, with people using basic personal computers as mining hardware. This fact combined with the anonymity features means that it is also one of the most illicitly mined coins using malicious software.