Monero or XMR, the privacy driven cryptocurrency has been climbing the price charts at a staggering pace over the last week. After the stable rise in price experienced over the course of 3 months, from $0.80 to $2.50, XMR has now taken a giant leap to the $4.90 mark in less than one week.
Data via CryptoCompare.com
The accentuated price rise came after the AlphaBay announcement on Monday, in which the Deepweb Dark Market detailed the addition of Monero as an accepted cryptocurrency. The announcement itself included a prediction on the price rise, which was to be expected considering the low supply of XMR in circulation. According to Deepdotweb, AlphaBay is the most popular market currently operating on the deep web. In an announcement made on the website, the AlphaBay administrator said:
Due to the size of the marketplace and possible side effects, we are forced to make the implementation in two phases. We expect this to cause a spike in the price, so if you are an investor, now is the time to purchase Monero.
Monero uses Ring signatures to mix coins between users, removing the need for third-party bitcoin tumblers, which may pose problems regarding traceability and coin fungibility. The anonymous nature of Monero makes it a perfect candidate to be added alongside Bitcoin on the dark market scene, or even to replace it completely as the currency of choice in the deep web ecosystem, which could have positive consequences for Bitcoin as it would dissociate itself from morally dubious websites and services.
The CPU friendly nature of Monero mining along with the recent price rise also means that more users can have access to the cryptocurrency without the need to signup for an exchange, which increases the anonymity associated with acquiring the cryptocurrency in order to place an order in the dark market. Anyone can easily mine XMR with a CPU or Graphic card.
More cryptocurrencies may be added in the future, privacy-centric coins like Digital Cash (DASH) or the yet to be released ZCash (ZEC) come to mind as possible candidates for the Dark Market. The same announcement from AlphaBay expressed this possibility:
We plan on adding other currencies in the future as the demand grows.
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