No.018
Monero XMR
The shadow-cloaked ghost ninja who never leaves a single footprint
🎭 A ghost ninja in a shadow cloak, it veils its face, its destination, and everything it's carrying in mist
💬 “You won't find where I went or what I carried. The mist closes behind me. I've been doing this since 2014, and I'm still here. 🌫️”
- Privacy ‘digital cash’ that hides the sender, receiver, and amount by default.
- Bitcoin writes every payment in public; Monero's transactions simply can't be traced.
- It isn't a Bitcoin relative. It's an independent CryptoNote line that went live in 2014.
📖 The Story
On October 31, 2024, Kraken pulled Monero off its shelves for European customers. Binance had already shown it the door back in February. By the end of that year, roughly 60 privacy coins had been delisted somewhere in the world, the most since 2021. The reason regulators kept circling back to was always the same: our ghost ninja is too good at its job. Hand it a coin and you cannot say where the coin went, who received it, or how much changed hands. That is precisely the trick the EU's anti-money-laundering rules were written to stamp out.
It is a strange thing to fear, if you think about it. The job was never a secret. Monero went live on April 18, 2014, after the community took a coin called BitMonero, built by a Bitcointalk user known only as ‘thankful_for_today’, and forked it in a different direction. They named it the Esperanto word for ‘coin,’ and they were blunt about the goal. Bitcoin keeps a ledger that anyone can read forever, recording who paid whom. Monero would do the opposite by design.
The ninja learned three tricks to pull it off. Ring signatures bury the real sender in a crowd of decoys. Stealth addresses hand out a fresh, throwaway destination on every payment. And RingCT, switched on in 2017, hides the amount itself. So even with the ledger open in front of you, the trail just stops. Some people call that the closest thing crypto has to actual cash, since nobody can trace a banknote either. Regulators call it something less flattering. Either way, the mist keeps closing, and the ninja keeps walking. 🌫️
📊 Stats
🧩 How it works
Monero's secret is using three hiding techniques at once. ① Ring signatures hide the ‘sender’ among several candidates, ② stealth addresses mask the ‘receiving address’ with a fresh one each time, and ③ RingCT encrypts the ‘amount’ too. So even if you stare straight at the ledger, you can't tell who sent how much to whom. Mining uses a method called RandomX (added in 2019), so it works on an ordinary PC without expensive special machines, which keeps mining from piling up in one place.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Privacy comes switched on for every payment. You don't opt in, and nobody can read who spent what
- RandomX lets you mine on a normal PC, so no factory of special machines gets to dominate
- It has quietly done one job since 2014, which makes it the most battle-tested privacy coin around
- That same anonymity keeps regulators on its case (Binance dropped it in February 2024, Kraken delisted it for European users on October 31)
- There is no hard supply cap. New coins mint forever (tail emission, 0.6 XMR per block, though yearly inflation is already under 1%)
- With fewer big exchanges listing it, simply buying or selling XMR can be a chore
🧬 Evolution Line
Monero isn't part of the Bitcoin family. It was born in 2014 as a hard fork of BitMonero, an independent line built on the CryptoNote protocol, and it's a cousin of Bytecoin (BCN), which shares the same CryptoNote roots.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Monero?
- It's privacy ‘digital cash’ that hides the sender, the receiver, and the amount, all by default. Bitcoin's transactions are public and traceable, but Monero's can't be traced. It launched in 2014.
- How does it hide a transaction?
- It uses three techniques together. ‘Ring signatures’ hide the sender among decoy candidates, ‘stealth addresses’ mask the receiving address, and ‘RingCT’ (added in 2017) encrypts the amount too. So you can't tell who sent how much to whom.
- Does it have a supply cap?
- Unlike Bitcoin (fixed at 21 million), Monero has no maximum supply. Since June 2022 it uses ‘tail emission’, minting 0.6 XMR per block forever. Even so, its inflation rate is already under 1% a year and keeps trending toward zero.
- Why is it being removed from exchanges?
- In 2024, regulatory pressure such as the EU's anti-money-laundering rules (AMLR) led big exchanges to delist Monero in large numbers. Binance removed it from its main platform in February, and Kraken removed it from the European (EEA) market on October 31. Its strong privacy keeps putting it at odds with regulators. (This is information only, not advice about any exchange or investment.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only (MOCK · 2026-06-04).