Spending the last ten months in a bear market shows just how euphoric the market was at the height of the last bull run. Many projects had little to offer in terms of development, resulting in highly overvalued projects.

To top it all off, the majority of coins or tokens from the last bull market are likely utility tokens and may not have much to speak of in terms of value (since utility tokens are not securities, a successful project does not necessarily lead to higher token prices). This sentiment is right in line with the 2017 prediction that 95 percent of cryptocurrencies would fail this year.

That being said, the public now approaches the crypto markets more critically. Bitcoin is obviously the top choice, in terms of market cap, sentiment, history, and mainstream interest. But what’s number two? Could Monero (XMR) be the best alternative?

The Facts About Monero

Monero is an anonymous coin, meaning that it has the ability to make transactions anonymous, compared to the public ledger and history seen in Bitcoin. “Monero uses ring signatures, ring confidential transactions, and stealth addresses to obfuscate the origins, amounts, and destinations of all transactions. Monero provides all the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency, without any of the typical privacy concessions.”

Monero also reportedly has a total supply of about 18.4 million. (The total supply will increase by a small amount over time, even after final distribution, maintaining mining incentive, security, etc.)

Reasons To Be Bullish On Monero

Assuming that most current coins/tokens are utilities, leaves a handful of promising coins in the payment sector to choose from. The goal of these coins is to become a payment solution, store of value, etc.

However, this list can be further shortened by removing Proof-of-Stake coins, due to the argument that PoS is centralized.

Monero is Proof-of-Work (PoW) and did not have a pre-mine, making the coins more evenly dispersed among the population (in theory), instead of whales and developers owning much of the initial supply. It also aims to be a payment/store of value solution. This makes the coin itself have value, instead of simply using the token as part of an ecosystem for a proposed blockchain product or service, leading to a much more limited use case.

XMR also has a relatively small coin supply, as far as the global population is concerned. This provides an element of scarcity, as seen in Bitcoin, potentially leading to greater demand and value.

Monero is unique, in that it’s built based upon different code than Bitcoin, with many other projects being forks of Bitcoin, or at least based on Bitcoin’s code. The founder of XMR is stated to be unknown, making it even more similar to Bitcoin.

Added to all these benefits is that XMR has the capability to provide added anonymity. Basically, Monero has many similar properties and benefits that people love about Bitcoin, with the addition of anonymity. And anonymity in crypto may have far-reaching potential, even as far as governments are concerned, with potential government application of the technology. Sure, Bitcoin can be anonymous if used in an over-the-counter (OTC) fashion – but it’s nice to have an option with built-in anonymity potential.

Why Monero May Not Be The Best Alternative

The anonymity feature of Monero provides significant potential for the coin, but that could also be a potential hazard to society. Matt Suiche of Comae Technologies (a security firm), states that it’s “one of the favorites, if not the favorite,” speaking about Monero and its use in ransomware attacks. Although fiat also currently has the same potential for criminal activity and anonymity, just in different ways.

Rodolfo Novak (CEO and co-founder of Coinkite) explains his viewpoint on Monero in a video, mentioning that “it’s not anonymous – that’s the reality”. In the same video, notable Bitcoin maximalist Tone Vays also claims that “the only anonymity with Monero, is when you send if from yourself to yourself”.

Perhaps the future will bring more clarity on the topic of anonymity and Monero, and whether or not the public will choose to further embrace Monero as a currency option.