If you’ve been watching the crypto markets lately, you've probably noticed something odd and amazing happening with Monero (XMR), that is if you care anything at all about your financial privacy. While most of the market has been either chopping sideways or dipping into the red in a year-to-date comparison, Monero has been quietly doing its own thing, and by that, I mean taking moon shots away from the rest of the market.
Just check out this chart I’m sharing. I was playing around with some of the premium features on TradingView and made this comparison chart. You can see how Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and even our beloved Hive are either struggling to stay flat or down significantly year-to-date. Meanwhile, Monero is up over 74%. It's not just outperforming other cryptos including BTC, it's also beating gold, and the S&P500! That’s not just decoupling. That’s a full-on flex move by true cypherpunks, no Wall Street or governments needed.
Why Is Monero Taking Off?
Now here’s the kicker that most people just can't seem to understand... Monero is doing all of this while being actively delisted from most major exchanges and being banded in the EU! Why? Because it works too damn well! Monero offers real financial privacy, and that scares the ever loving shit out of governments and centralized regulators. Unlike Bitcoin, which can be traced pretty easily through tools from companies like Chainalysis, Monero is built from the ground up to be untraceable. And it's not just marketing fluff, it's the truth. The IRS literally offered a bounty in 2018 for anyone who could break Monero’s privacy. Nobody’s cracked it yet.
FCMP++ is Coming
And just when you think it couldn't get more private, Monero is about to be leveling up in a big way. With the new FCMP++ (Full Chain Membership Proof++) update, it’s going to become even harder to track, or more like damn near impossible. This update improves ring signatures to make it even more unclear which input in a transaction is the real one. It's like hiding a needle in a stack of all the identical needles. It takes the 1 of 16 ring signature to a 1 in EVERY TRANSACTION! I mean, Good luck, IRS, haha!
Real-World Usage Where Privacy Actually Matters
Here’s the part that really says everything you need to know about Monero: it’s actually used. And I’m not just talking about speculative trading or holding on exchanges. I mean real peer-to-peer commerce. It’s the go-to currency on the dark web, and whether you like or hate that fact, it speaks volumes about its privacy. If you’re trying to avoid surveillance or censorship, Monero is the tool of choice.
But it’s not just happening in hidden corners of the internet anymore. There’s a whole Monero circular economy forming in the open. Marketplace sites similar to eBay, like XMRBazaar and Monero Market, are popping up for people to buy and sell goods directly using Monero. There’s even a business directory called Monerica that lists Monero-accepting merchants around the world. So Monero is like a private version of what Bitcoin should have been. Anyway, I can also buy gift cards for just about everything I need, including Visa prepaid cards I can use in my Apple Wallet at any real world merchant, all without giving my personal information!
There are DEXs like Bisq, BasicswapDEX, and Havano that are popping up that allow you to exchange XMR for various currencies including fiat in a true digital peer-to-peer way. This is the kind of stuff that scares them. They can't stop it, we can develop faster and better than they could even think about regulating.
Shifting My Commerce Focus
And this hits close to home for me. I’ve been trying to build something similar on Hive for a while now, 5 years actually. The dream was a real circular economy powered by crypto and supported by the community. But it just hasn’t caught on the way I hoped. The support for commerce on Hive, especially privacy-focused or peer-to-peer efforts, just isn’t where I need it to be.
So I’m shifting my focus. I still love Hive and what it stands for, but when it comes to building a truly usable, privacy-friendly commerce system, Monero is leading the pack. That’s where my energy is going now, and honestly, it feels like the right move. I am now even accepting Monero on the Hivelist Store for all digital items over BTC and LTC. I accept those too, but Monero sits higher on the list, haha, if it's not right now, because honestly I can't remember the exact order, but it will be later today...
Why I’ve Been Stacking Monero
All of this just reinforces why I’ve been so focused on mining, earning, and stacking Monero. I’ve talked about it many times before, but I don’t think people realize just how important financial privacy is until it’s gone. We’re heading into a world where everything is trackable, monitored, and controlled. And yet here’s Monero, the digital equivalent of cash, quietly gaining strength while the rest of the market gets slapped around. With governments across the world beginning to compete for BTC for their strategic reserves, I fear that transparent coins like BTC, LTC, and others could be targeted for confiscation if they are able to tie your wallet to your real world ID through being stupid and using KYC exchanges.
My Portfolio Couldn't Be Happier
My portfolio is loving it though. And I’m feeling pretty validated for putting in the work to build out a mining setup that earns me Monero every single day, as well as sending all my other mining rewards and much of my Hive rewards into XMR. This isn’t about trying to get rich quick, or proving my social worth, it’s about owning and using a form of money that actually protects you, not just pumps your bags.
So yeah, while Monero might not make the headlines like some of the others in ways other than governments banning it, exchanges delisting it, etc, it’s leading in one of the most important battles of our time, the right to privacy in our financial transactions. And from where I’m sitting, it’s winning. I mean, the charts don't lie...
Until next time...
Be cool, be real, and always abide with you my dudes!