What is Monero (XMR) ?
Monero is a secure, private cryptocurrency. Your transactions and accounts are kept private.
The open sourced cryptocurrency was created back in April 2014 under the name BitMonero. The name is a compound of Bit (as in Bitcoin) and Monero ("Coin" in Esperanto). In only five days the community opted for the name to change to Monero.
How are Monero transactions different than Bitcoin?
Monero is based on CryptoNote, unlike many cryptocurrencies that are simply derivatives of Bitcoin. Essentially CryptoNotes transactions cannot be followed through the block chain in a way that reveals who received or sent the coins. The sender and receiver in the transactions are the only party's who have access to the whole set of data about the transaction.
Market Cap & Supply
Market Cap: 1.37 Billion
Circulating Supply: 15.1 Million
24 Hour Volume: 6,223 BTC
I wanted to show you the Market Cap chart going back just this year. It is amazing to see Monero's market cap jump from 250 million to nearly 1.4 Billion in just over a year. It also looks like there has been a lot of recnet volume these past few months. Monero got upwards of $140 USD and then fell to its current price right around the $90 level.
Monero Supply works a little different than lets say Bitcoin. I was surprised to see no Max supply for the coin, i did some digging and found a well put explanation by reddit user Ant-n "Monero is a bit different that bitcoin about money supply.Once the total number of moneroj will reach 18.3 million then money supply will stop decreasing and stay at a constant rate of 0.3 Monero per minute.This is meant to provide incentive to secure the blockchain even after the 18.3 million coins will be distributed.Note that it's a constant amount so it will be about 1% the first year and it will reduce every year but never reach 0." Apparently this is set to happen May 31st, 2022.
Monero Markets
As you can see there is quite the number of exchanges that currently trade this coin. I always think it is a good idea to check the markets section out. This is useful because it gives you a good idea about how many exchanges are trading the coin, the number of coins there trading and where the coin is trading from. From all of that data Coinmarketcap also gives the total % of volume that a particular exchange has which is very useful in seeing how spread out the coin is so to speak among exchanges. In total there are 46 different exchanges listed trading Monero currently.
Social Media
Monero has almost 72k subsribers and is actually fairly active. There are at least a couple tweets a day. In general I think it is a good idea to follow Cryptocurrency's on their social media whether it be instagram, twitter, facebook etc. This is a good way to keep updated on the coin and other people affiliated with the coin.
Conclusion:
Here is a quick summary on Monero, I'm sure I will learn even more and may update or do a new post to inform you with what I have learned. I hope the information presented easily, please feel free to comment below and give me your advice, compliments or constructive criticism. :P
Oh and I will be purchasing a small amount of Monero in the future and plan to HODL that!
Sources:
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero_(cryptocurrency)