What is Monero and How Can I Trade it?

Today we are going to talk about the virtual asset Monero (XMR). It is a confidential and secure alternative to Bitcoin. At first glance, these characteristics are quite suitable for digital gold tokens, but this ecosystem, a completely different type of cryptography is used to ensure the anonymity of payments.

Why was it necessary? Not all users were satisfied with the transparency of the network of Bitcoin, and this prompted developers to create truly anonymous digital coins.

Monero is a cryptocurrency and decentralized blockchain ecosystem powered by the RandomX protocol. The Monero cryptocurrency uses a one-time ring signature algorithm to perform anonymous transactions. The developers took the name of the digital currency Monero from the international language Esperanto. Translated into Russian, this word means a coin. Its official ticker is XMR.  Since at the time of its launch 80% of Bytecoin had already been distributed, the team launched a re-issue of the XMR coin.

 History of the creation of the company

The first crypto network on CryptoNote, called Bytecoin, was launched on US Independence Day – July 4, 2012. Bytecoin operates the EdDSA ring signature system. To increase the anonymity of transactions, an obfuscation method is used based on the generation of one-time keys. Two years later, the lion’s share of Bytecoin tokens had already been mined and distributed.

A few months later, the coin network was subjected to a massive hacker attack. The attackers did not succeed, but due to this event, the flaws in the system kernel became apparent. The project team began to fix vulnerabilities, in this regard, the release of the MyMonero crypto wallet was postponed for almost 3 years. Developers strive to stop the intervention of ASIC miners at any cost, so the Monero algorithm has been changed twice already.

The last time, in the spring of 2019, the coin was transferred to Cryptonight R, and in the fall the next transition was made, now to the Random X algorithm. After this event, Monero pools stopped cooperating with the owners of gpu mining farms, or rather, the GPU miners themselves refused to work with this altcoin due to the complete lack of income. XMR mining is only profitable on PC CPUs.

 Trading

With the liquidity of the virtual XMR coin, everything is in order, it is exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or fiat on 70 trading platforms. Including:

  1. Binance;
  2. EXMO;
  3. Huobi Global;
  4. Bitfinex;
  5. Kraken;
  6. Poloniex.

Major trading pairs: XMR / ETH, XMR / USD, XMR / BUSD. And of course you can convert monero to BTC.

To work on the exchange, you need to create an account, the registration procedure on each of the platforms is approximately the same:

  • Enter your email and password.
  • Confirm your email address and log in to the exchange.

For security reasons, it is recommended to immediately activate 2FA, and on some exchanges this is required. Then you open a deposit, deposit cryptocurrency on it and perform trading operations. When choosing an exchange, pay attention to the XMR rate, it may differ slightly on different platforms, as well as the minimum threshold for depositing and withdrawing funds. It is possible to carry out financial transactions using traditional money on a crypto exchange only after identity verification. To do this, you will need to indicate your passport data, upload scanned copies of documents and take a selfie. The check can take up to 48 hours.

 Conclusion

If XMR cryptocurrency is so anonymous, how can you verify its transactions? It’s just that the program will not be able to create a one-time key if you specify an amount more than you have on your balance sheet. The key is checked by the nodes for uniqueness and, if no matches are found, the transaction will be executed.

Mars Cureg

Web designer by profession, photography hobbyist, T-shirt lover, design blog founder, gamer. Socially and physically awkward, lack of social skills, struggles to communicate with anyone who doesn't have a keyboard. Willing to walk to get to the promised land. Photo and video freelancer, SEO.