The preeminent privacy crypto Monero (XMR) is seeing a return to all-time-high levels of transactions on its network, first set in April 2019, at the same time as hashrate on the network is also trending near historic highs.
(source: Bitinfocharts.com)
Transactions have been steadily rising on the network since roughly October 2019, shortly after Monero’s mining hashrate shot up significantly following a hard fork aimed at getting proprietary ASIC miners off the Monero network.
This means that Monero is now exclusively mined with consumer-grade GPUs; this is intentional, to try and avoid the sort of industrial-level investment – and thus potential centralization – that is present on the Bitcoin network and others.
(source: Bitinfocharts.com)
There is no apparent reason for the increased number of transactions – including from price speculation, as Monero did not begin seeing a significant spike in price until December 2019. But this is perhaps a fitting mystery for a privacy-focused crypto.
CryptoGlobe recently reported that the rogue state of North Korea has been dramatically increasing its Monero mining operations since May of last year. Monero’s time-tested security architecture makes it ideal for this application. The cryptocurrency, it’s worth noting, is also used on darknet marketplaces. In its defense, Monero is also widely accepted as a payment method on various pro-cryptocurrency platforms and various crypto exchanges let users buy Monero.
Monero’s price has been generally falling since June 2019, when it saw a significant spike to over $100. But this surge is far and away less than its all-time-high price of $460, achieved during the monster bull run of early 2018.
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