On December 18 Monero (XMR) will be marking two months since the platform underwent a hard fork as a way to upgrade the Monero blockchain. The upgrade was named ‘Beryllium Bullet’ or ‘Monero 0.13.0.’ What imoact could this have on XMR price?

The upgrade was meant to bring, among other things, cheap transactions costs. Additionally, transaction anonymity on the Monero blockchain was marked to benefit from the upgrade. However, as data on coinmarketcap shows, the XMR price did not respond too well with the hard fork.

A brief overview

On the day the hard fork took place, Oct 18,the XMR price closed the day at $102.91. The price assumed an upward trend to reach $108.44 on Oct 23 after which the price varied between $101.00 and$106.00 between Oct 24 and Nov 3.

The price then rose a bit higher to $111.80 on Nov 4 only to shed off the gains on Nov 8 when it drifted to $108.43. From that point onward, the XMR price has been on a free fall and is currently holding its price at $40.01 indicating a price appreciation of 4.20 percent.

At the time of writing, Monero (XMR) had a market capitalization of 666 million U.S dollars and a traded volume of 11 million U.S dollars in the last 24 hours.

Currently, the exchanges that are leading in XMR trading are Bithumb, Binance, Exrates, and Hitbtc as data from an aggregator platform, WorldCoinIndex, indicates that Bithumb has an XMR price of $39.59. On Bithumb, XMR is paired with the South Korean Won.

On Binance, Monero is paired against Bitcoin, at the time of writing, the XMR price on the exchange was at $39.77. On Exrates, XMR has also been paired with Bitcoin (BTC) and the U.s dollar while on Hitbtc it has been paired with BTC and Tether (USDT).

XMR price outlook in the near future

In the short term, the XMR price is anticipated to gather some momentum to break the current bearish outlook and reach for new heights.

The XMR price prediction for the year 2019 is around 600 U.S dollars. Also, when projecting the price in the long term, say 4 years and above, XMR may be worth approximately 2,000 U.S dollars.

The appreciation of the XMR price is majorly pegged on its anonymous nature and the fact that it stops financial watchdogs and law enforcers from snooping around your transactions.

In the past, law enforcers having failed in their tracks trying to follow the trail of transactions on the Monero blockchain. This hoisted the trust users had on the platform and as the trust increases, it will help achieve the predicted XMR price in the short and long-term forecasts.

Does the current XMR price indicate an investment opportunity?

The short answer is, of course, yes. As with other cryptos, the price has experienced a fair share of the bullish momentum. This implies that when the bulls take over, which experts predict it may be soon, the XMR price will appreciate significantly. This, as you have guessed will bring good tidings to those who invested during the coins’ nosedives.

However,the XMR price may be affected by regulations. In the recent past, financial watchdogs and law enforcers have been seeking to discourage anonymous crypto transactions to prevent crypto from being used to fund terrorism and launder money.

If XMR beats the regulatory pressure, then it’s a good investment choice. However, if it succumbs, it may lose its value. Therefore, when investing in XMR its good you first study the shift in regulations on blockchain platforms facilitating anonymous transactions.

Final words

The current XMR price indicates a good time to buy. And with experts predicting a bull run to start in the early days of 2019, by the end of 2019 even if you decide to hold your XMR for the next couple of years, you may never regret investing in Monero. But never forget that crypto prices are very volatile.