Monero (XMR) is available to trade peer-to-peer (P2P) on our LocalCoinSwap P2P cryptocurrency exchange. For those who aren’t familiar with Monero, take some time to read our Crypto Spotlight dedicated to one of the most popular digital currencies which has a direct focus on being private, secure and untraceable.
Privacy and accessibility to our personal data have become incredibly important mainstream issues. Our personal information is used to make very important decisions in our lives on a daily basis. Personal data can be used to affect our reputation, to shape our behavior, and influence our decisions. It can even be used as a tool to exercise control over the public and, in some countries particularly with oppressive governments or rising inflation, maintaining your privacy can become a matter of life or death. This is why digital currencies like Monero have a very important role to play in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
What is Monero?
Monero (XMR), which means coin in Esperanto, is a decentralized, open-source digital currency that was launched in April 2014 by a founder known only as thankful_for_today. Originally known as Bitmonero, until it was shortened to Monero, its primary focus is on being private and untraceable but it is also known to be fast and secure. One of the prominent criticisms of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is that by allowing transactions to be transparent, they defeat the purpose of cryptocurrency because they are traceable. With Monero, this isn’t an issue as the sender, the receiver and the amounts of digital currency transferred are all anonymous.
As of writing this, Monero is #11 on CoinMarketCap in terms of market capitalization and one XMR token is worth $61.26 USD.
Features of Monero:
Fungibility is where Monero gets really interesting and separates itself from a lot of other traditional cryptocurrencies also designed as a medium of exchange. Now, firstly, let's define fungibility.
Investopedia defines fungibility as “the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. Assets that are fungible are exchangeable for each other and simplify the exchange and trade processes, as fungibility implies equal value between the assets.”
An example of something fungible could be unmarked gold of the same grade and weight. 1 ounce of gold is always interchangeable with 1 ounce of gold while holding the same value. In contrast, fiat currency can be a partial example however it is a flawed example as fiat currency is typically marked with batch numbers making it not fully fungible and to some degree still traceable. Fungibility is a distinctive advantage that Monero has over Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency, as it provides no way to directly link transactions together, nor trace the history of any XMR currency. 1 XMR is always identical to any other 1 XMR. A currency – whether it be digital currency or physical, paper money – must be fungible if people are going to trust it to make daily transactions. Ultimately, fungibility matters because products lose their value when they lose their fungibility.
We promise to write more about fungibility on the blog in the coming weeks, but for now, we won’t go into too much depth about the technicalities of fungibility but we will highlight that what particularly makes Monero fungible is its use of three different privacy technologies:
- Ring Signatures
- Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT)
- Stealth Addresses
These three privacy technologies all work together to hide the sender, amount, and receiver of a transaction or trade.
Monero is designed with privacy as a baseline feature, so there is no way to accidentally send a transparent transaction. When all the parts of a transaction and path of the coins involved are private, as well as all of the transactions following it, all coins are inherently treated equally, which is the basis of fungibility.
Why Do Privacy Coins Matter If You Have Nothing To Hide?
You wouldn’t want to share your bank statements with the world, so if you don’t want to share your crypto balances with everyone you transact with either, while also not having to worry about using secondary wallets or potentially making a mistake exposing your funds to the public eye, then Monero might be precisely what you are looking for.
Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous in the sense that, unless you track a transaction from a person or account associated with that person, you don’t know who owns what address, however, something as simple as purchasing an item from someone using a personal wallet exposes your Bitcoin balance, transactional history and potentially other personal information. In addition, the Bitcoin blockchain is available for all to see and this can cause problems such as exchanges deciding to reject deposits from accounts used for certain things like gambling or anything which they deem against their Terms of Service (TOS).
Maybe you accepted some cryptocurrency unknowingly from an address associated with an illicit activity and then tried to use those same cryptocurrencies in a legitimate way, only to experience having a centralized exchange, or another service account, locked down. Suddenly you have no access to your funds for weeks on end as someone else decides what they will do with your money. Perhaps you might even have law enforcement knocking on your door asking questions about a transaction that you have absolutely no idea about. There could even be several transactions between you and whatever illegal activity that occurred yet you just ended up being the first individual personally identified as the holder of those “tainted” coins, even though you may have had absolutely no knowledge or involvement in whatever the criminal or suspicious activity may have been.
If you were selling your old car would you want the person to be able to see your bank balance? The answer is probably not and for many, that extends to your cryptocurrency holdings. While crime is always a crime, and absolutely inexcusable, in the world of cryptocurrency, you can be exposed to “tainted” coins without your knowledge when doing something as simple as trading a good or a service for a cryptocurrency that uses a public ledger. This is where privacy coins help.
It’s important to remember that privacy coins like Monero were not created for illicit purposes yet sadly the reasons wanting privacy are often lost on people who don’t always understand the importance of retaining our privacy until it’s too late. A criticism of privacy coins is that they can also be used to assist people trying to hide illicit behavior, but that doesn’t mean everyone else should necessarily lose their right to discretion simply because of a minority. In addition, most criminal behavior is committed using cash so does that mean we should just stop using cash?
While Bitcoin is something most of us love, and for good reason, as it brought about the cryptocurrency revolution we are in the midst of, it does have its downsides. When using Bitcoin or other public ledger crypto assets in conjunction with Monero or transacting in Monero alone public blockchains can be used more discreetly and help you maintain your financial privacy.
How to buy Monero P2P on LocalCoinSwap?
If financial privacy, decentralization or even community-ownership are important topics to you, and even more so if they are some of the reasons you choose to use P2P exchanges rather than centralized exchanges in the first place, then you will likely be very happy to see Monero added to the list of tradable crypto assets on the LocalCoinSwap P2P exchange.
The fact is that privacy should be a choice and if it’s important to you, or valuable to others, then you might like to choose to buy or sell Monero and trade it in your local region. Perhaps you want to buy Monero in Venezuela using Venezuelan bolívar. If there’s an ad selling Monero on the LocalCoinSwap P2P exchange and it has the sell terms that you agree with then you can buy Monero using Venezuelan bolivar or any local currency. Alternatively, if you see an opportunity to set up your own business and sell Monero in Turkey to anyone with Turkish Lira. All you need to do is create an advertisement selling Monero in your local currency and you are ready to go.
LocalCoinSwap makes it possible to buy or sell Monero and trade with whom you choose, how you choose, with a large range of payment choices, anywhere around the world.
Want to learn more about Monero?
As expected, Monero has a strong and dedicated community online. You can find out more about Monero by viewing the official website, following them on Twitter or participating in their very active subreddit. They are also active on Facebook but if you like to dig a little deeper you can track their development on their Github or on StackExchange.
Alternatively, come and chat with us in our LocalCoinSwap Telegram channel or LocalCoinSwap Discord channel. We are incredibly passionate about topics such as decentralization and privacy here at LocalCoinSwap so we encourage you to join us and let us know about your experiences P2P trading, XMR and all things crypto.
Want to start making money with Monero (XMR)? Join LocalCoinSwap and start P2P trading today! It only takes a few minutes to set up a buy or sell advertisement in your local area!