Monero to Australian dollar exchange rate

Monero offers users privacy and security

Monero is an open-source cryptocurrency that was created in 2014. It uses a public ledger to record transactions with new coins created through a process called mining, just like bitcoin, but it offers security and usability features that are not present with other coins.

Monero hides the identity of the sender, the recipient and the transaction amount using a sophisticated algorithm that has been extensively tested.

Monero is marketed as one of the most privacy-centric coins currently on the market, and in 2017, Monero adopted a new method that aims to develop these privacy features.

Monero is already in use as a means of exchange in a number of commercial forums and is an established method of transferring value around the globe.

Historical pricing of Monero

Only 15.6 million Monero coins can potentially be created. This means that Monero is far scarcer than other similar coins. This scarcity and increasing adoption of the coin may have attributed to the price of one Monero coin rising from US$10 at the beginning of January 2017 to over US$300 at the time of writing.

The rise in the value of Monero is not new. The first material rise began in 2015 when the coin went from just a few dollars to over twenty in a short pace of time as adoption of the coin began to grow. It remained steady until October 2017 when a major rise in value began.

The increase in coin value during the last three months of 2017 was particularly strong. The coin rose from just under US$100 to its present $300 - $400 range. The coin has yet to break US$500 on a major exchange, but it has come very close to doing it a number of times.

There have been no major pullbacks in price on any major exchange since, although there was a slight decline on 8 January 2018. However, this decrease was not something that was entirely due to Monero.

This drop may have been caused by a revaluation of the pricing methodology at a major US exchange. It affected all currencies and Monero recovered within a two-week period.

The rise in its value has been consistent over the course of 2017 with no real significant drops in value. Trading volumes are rising steadily as well, and the coin now has a market capitalisation of around 5 billion dollars.

Things to consider before buying Monero

Monero’s supply is about the same as bitcoin, but Monero’s underlying technology offers privacy features not present with bitcoin. Transaction speeds using the coin are at present much faster than bitcoin.

With businesses all over the world wanting to preserve the security of international transactions, they may decide to adopt Monero as their transaction method of choice since Monero has been proven to be a secure method of conducting international commerce from both the buyers’ and the recipients’ perspectives.

In fact, there is already a Monero add-on that allows the thousands of businesses using the WooCommerce app on WordPress, which is currently powering ecommerce on over 380,000 websites, to accept Monero as payment.

Major musicians in particular seem to be particularly keen on the advantages of selling music for Monero, with Monero users including the Backstreet Boys, the Lumineers, Weezer, Mariah Carey, Marilyn Manson, Lana Del Rey, Motley Crue, Sia and Slayer.

Any partnership with a large corporation that wishes to preserve the privacy of its internal cross-border transactions while transmitting funds faster and cheaper than the current international banking system could provide a further boost to Monero’s adoption.

There are plans to develop this user base with the Monero-backed “Project Coral Reef”. This project supports merchants and companies who wish to adopt and use the coin.

At present, the project has resulted in over 50 companies adopting the coin. While many of these companies are currently small, the project, which was recently featured in Forbes magazine, will continue to push the benefits of Monero throughout 2018.

In an uncertain world, many people may decide that privacy and security are valuable commodities, and traders will need to decide whether a coin that has risen 3,000% in a year but is still 40 times less valuable than its most similar counterpart represents an exciting proposition.