The Monero price enjoyed an overnight rise of 9.4% into Monday morning, rising from $127.98 to $140.03. Although the price of Monero remains a little way off its weekly high of $148.82, it is an encouraging sign for XMR given that it has recently outperformed the top 20 leading cryptocurrencies in terms of growth.
There’s no doubt that there was significant support for XMR/USD at the beginning of the week, up from $128 to the $136 region. However, we saw a significant retracement last night after XMR attempted to break the $148 mark. Overnight, the price fell remarkably from $147.54 to a low of $139.53 this morning. It’s still by no means reached its seven-day low of $127.35 on Saturday 21st July, but it is clear there is significant resistance to XMR in and around the $145 price point.
At the beginning of the week, XMR experienced daily traded volumes of $58 million, which is more than a twofold increase on the $23 million volume recorded at the end of last week. Around a fifth of all traded volume on XMR has come directly against the US dollar (XMR/USD), with just shy of $12 million matched. Monero is proving particularly popular at present on the Poland-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinroom, with around 10% of daily trades placed against XMR/USD, followed by a further 9% on XMR/EUR.
Monero is a cryptocurrency that focuses firmly on private and untraceable transactions. Unlike the biggest crypto coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which operate on transparent blockchains and have openly verifiable transactions, Monero utilizes a special type of cryptography to ensure all payments are 100% unlinkable between senders and receivers.
Due to its 100% privacy, Monero has rapidly become a favored coin among users of the dark web, along with Dash. However, many within the industry believe XMR has a bright future for more legitimate purposes too. Its use on the dark web is set to become only a tiny fragment of what Monero could be capable of in the months and years to come. Bitcoin’s inability to resolve its own security vulnerabilities could see XMR become increasingly popular. Its stealth address innovation coupled with its ring signature functionality has led to the price of Monero rise steadily in line with its popularity.
Historically, credit card providers will monitor customer transactions to make sure there is no illegal activity. Monero is fast becoming a credible payment alternative for those who wish to make sensitive transactions in complete privacy. Whether it’s prescribed medications and healthcare treatments or buying items online, it’s a suitable option for those who don’t want their expenditure to be reflected on credit card statements and their overall credit profiles.
Monero was recently utilized by Change.org as part of its plans to raise funds for the organization’s charitable work carried out in Brazil. A Monero-powered fundraising screensaver was launched, tapping into individuals’ CPU processing power when computers sat idle. According to the organization, which is a global online platform for sponsored charity campaigns, some 10,000 connected desktop PCs mined for XMR for up to 12 hours a day, raking in approximately $10,000 in donations towards the cause.
Unfortunately, there’s also been some negative press surrounding Monero of late, with the news that the eSports gaming network League of Legends fell foul to a Coinhive hack, stealing gamers’ processing power to mine for XMR. Josh Grunzweig, a researcher at Palo Alto Networks, suggested 5% of all Monero coins in circulation are mined from hacking incidents. Although security remains a concern, the transparency and privacy positives outweigh the negatives and all medium-term Monero forecasts suggest it is certainly an altcoin to watch for the remainder of 2018.
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