Happy 4 year anniversary, Monero! pic.twitter.com/saKhWU6fXr — Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) April 18, 2018

It’s a very special day for Monero . At the time of writing, Monero is currently valued at $226.92, up almost 14%, with a generous market cap of $3,617,559,411. What’s happening, why is today so significant? Apparently, today, the 18of April marks the 4anniversary of Monero, Happy Birthday Monero! Right, okay, I apologise, this probably doesn’t have anything to do with Monero’s sudden spike in value. Well, in theory it could have an influence. But it’s also film producer Eli Roth’s birthday, an event of equal significance when it comes to altering cryptocurrency markets I’m sure. So, joking aside, what’s happening with Monero? Let’s move back over the past few days and see how Monero has been performing. Much of this of course has resulted from the direct influence of the mid-April market surge, preceded by further expectations of another bull run in the coming weeks. The surge, on the 13of April saw the value of Monero move from $167 up to around $200. Ultimately, this was no a significant jump. Monero failed to hold the momentum of the surge and as a result has spent the past week in quite a turbulent state, bouncing around values between $180 and $200. Now, Monero has taken a huge leap up to almost $230, with no real sign of letting up, is this a sign that something bigger is happening? There’s no big news coming out of the Monero camp at the moment so actually, it’s quite difficult to see where this jump has come from. Overall, the markets around Monero are set at a steady pace, at the time of writing, it’s neighbours IOTA are down 1.38% and NEM, up just 3.66%. The 14% rise from Monero really is standing out amongst the crowd. Is this going to continue? Based on the recent data, it does seem unlikely that the huge gains at around 14% will continue for the foreseeable future, so sadly we don’t see Monero reaching $300 today, but it is a good sign that this currency could be carving a trend ahead of the predicted impending second bull run (which is expected to lead to further surges over the next few months). Historically of course, we did see Monero breach the $400 mark during the cryptocurrency boom at the start of this year and thus, the current value of $230 by Monero really isn’t that far away from it’s peak value. As the year progresses, $300 could become a more realistic prospect, if it does, $400 has to be next. What now? Well, in the name of birthday’s, grab yourself a slice of cake and make a toast to this emerging currency. Keep an eye on how it progresses because, it does look to be making ground now. Due to the volatile nature of Monero though, this could tail off at any minute, so maybe don’t get too excited.