In the wake of Facebook’s announcement of plans to launch their own stable coin “Libra,” many of the top influencers in the cryptocurrency space have been calling for the adoption of privacy coins. The fear is that a platform as big as Facebook that is already criticized for being “too big,” will rival big banks as an intermediary between consumers. Not only do they already know everything about you and abuse that information, they will be prone to massive financial record leaks when Libra inevitably finds widespread adoption through their billions of users.

In Andreas Antonopoulos’ latest public talk, he speaks about what people in the cryptocurrency community are going to do next. He says that we are going to “start differentiating based on our principles.” He goes on to hint that smaller crypto projects that do not focus on privacy may not be competitive because Facebook will be the fast payment network that collaborates with law enforcement. He tells his listeners that if you are going to compete with an entity that has no morality, you should differentiate where they cannot.

“I expect privacy currencies are going to get quite the run, because now suddenly there is a reason to really focus on privacy, and that’s because Facebook won’t,” he goes on to say.

This rhetoric falls parallel with what cybersecurity legend John McAfee has been saying for years- that privacy coins are the future. On a recent episode of “Off the Chain” podcast with host Anthony Pompliano, John makes the point that using privacy coins could be the difference of “losing your d*ck” or not. When asked which privacy coins are good, the first one that comes to mind, and the first one John mentions, is almost always Monero.

Many things about Monero really stand out compared to some of its competitors. Monero is well known as the top privacy coin sitting at a 1.7 billion dollar market cap at the time of this writing. It uses proof-of-working mining, just like Bitcoin. Furthermore, Monero forks itself to stay ASIC resistant, which allows the average user to continue to be rewarded while minting new coins. Another superior aspect of Monero is that each part of a transaction is anonymous whether you want it to be or not.

Many see Zcash as a competitor to Monero. Zcash could show signs of higher growth due to its exposure of being listed on Coinbase exchange. On the contrary, Zcash is private optional – meaning that your transactions are only private when you choose them to be. Stats have shown that when privacy is optional, it is used infrequently. Then when you do implement a private transaction, it looks suspicious.

Being the largest, most used privacy coin, Monero could surge in the wake of heightened focus on traceability by corporations and governments entering the space. Though the Bitcoin maximalists have been loud as Bitcoin surges in total market cap (now over 60% of all crypto is BTC), many agree that altcoin season always comes. As of now, Bitcoin transactions are trackable and the market for a trustless privacy coin will continue to grow. Monero is popular on the dark web and is accepted by some of their largest marketplaces.

Monero is not a coin without obstacles. However, Monero is a pure privacy coin and regulation can’t stop its adoption. If you are a principled investor, you may want to shift your strategy to incorporate privacy. After all, privacy is traditionally a pillar of cryptocurrency.

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