The monero price surged to $250 after the cryptocurrency was the subject of several bullish announcements — and privacy-conscious users discovered another anonymity-centric cryptocurrency was not quite as private as they had initially believed.
Monero Price Surges to $250
On Monday, the monero price was trading below $200, so the leap above $250 represented a 24-hour gain of approximately 28 percent. At present, the monero price is trading at a global average of $252, which translates into a $3.9 billion market cap.
Per the usual, South Korea-based Bithumb led the rally, and Korean traders valued monero at nearly $40 above the price on other top exchanges. At present, XMR/KRW is priced at $276, while monero’s corresponding USD and BTC pairs are priced below $240.
Factors Behind the Monero Price Rally
Three clear factors are contributing to the monero price rally. The first is that, on an episode of Real News with David Knight, cybersecurity pioneer John McAfee praised monero as an alternative to bitcoin. McAfee, who recently promised to eat his d**k on national television if the bitcoin price did not reach $1 million by 2020, predicted that if bitcoin did have a serious competitor, it was monero.
Second, Monero announced Project Coral Reef, an online shopping initiative that will allow music fans to use monero to purchase holiday gifts from more than 35 high-profile musical artists, including Mariah Carey, Toby Keith, and Fall out Boy at discount prices.
Finally — and most significantly — University of Michigan-Dearborn researcher Jeffrey Quesnelle published a paper that raised questions about the privacy of Zcash’s shielded addresses.
Quesnelle found that — at least the way most people currently use the shielded address feature — 31.5 percent of transactions using zk-SNARKS cryptography could be circumstantially linked to their original address.
Zcash’s Zooko Wilcox and Jack Gavigan wrote a blog post addressing the research, stressing that it had not uncovered any security vulnerabilities. However, they conceded that many users misunderstand how shielded addresses should be used, which is why they inadvertently sacrifice their privacy when using this feature.
“To protect yourself from this sort of exposure, don’t think of shielded addresses as something you pass money through, think of them as something you store money in. Storing money in a shielded address and sending a portion of it out as needed gives you very strong privacy. Moving money into it and then immediately moving that money out again does not,” Wilcox and Gavigan wrote.
Monero developer Riccardo Spagni expressed a hint of vindication on Twitter, recalling that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had praised the Zcash project but referred to Monero as “amateur crypto“.
“Turns out that 31.5% of the handful of ZCash private transactions are traceable. What’s that [Edward Snowden] quote again? Oh yes – ‘Great project, but the problem with amateur crypto is mistakes happen and have huge consequences for people like me,'” Spagni wrote.