For years, Monero has been praised by the Bitcoin community and highly respected Bitcoin developers for demonstrating legitimate development work and innovative privacy features for its users. Thus, for many, the rise of Monero in value was somewhat expected, considering its legitimacy and the talent behind its development team.
The market cap of Monero surged nearly 80% over the past 24 hours, reaching nearly US$110,000,000 and US$63 million in daily trading volume. It has been the best performing altcoin so far this week, due to the support and demand from various startups, developers, and traders.
Amidst the rapid upsurge in the price of Monero, online communities and experts have begun to discuss the significant advantages and limits of using the privacy-focused digital currency.
Since 2015, Monero has been backed by reputable Bitcoin Core developers like Peter Todd for maintaining its title as a genuine cryptocurrency. The developers behind Monero are focused on the well-being of the currency and its users, dedicated on providing the best possible privacy solutions for altcoin users.
Todd has always been very expressive of the difference between other privacy-related cryptocurrencies such as Dash from Monero, calling Dash a “snakeoil,” while protecting the reputation of Monero.
.@TheRektoning Without a doubt I’d choose @monerocurrency over @Dashpay – the latter is snakeoil, the former genuine crypto.
— Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc) July 17, 2015
His reasoning behind the success and legitimacy of Monero is simple; it is forked from Bytecoin and is not premined. Furthermore, it utilizes a technology endorsed by Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell called Cryptonote.
In contempt of the privacy solutions and security-related benefits Monero provides, experts including Adamant Research Editor in Chief Tuur Demeester believe that the cryptocurrency may struggle to deal with scalability, security, demand, and competition.
My view on #Monero: does offer better privacy, built on some real dev work. Concerns: scalability, security, actual demand, competition.
— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) August 28, 2016
Greg Maxwell also emphasized a similar concept a few years ago, when he explained that Monero is far from reaching a “mature state.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if none of the current implementations of it are around in ten years though: Bitcoin emerged at a surprisingly mature state, the BCN/MRO/FTM stuff isn’t yet anywhere near as mature. But certainly darkcoin is totally uninteresting compared to this stuff. They’re also free of the trusted initialization challenges zerocash has,” explained Maxwell.
While Monero excels in providing privacy to its users, it is difficult to speculate whether the currency and its development team will be able to deal with technical issues at the same caliber with other major currencies like Bitcoin.