The sudden increase in the price of Monero, one of the most popular privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, led some to question its legitimacy. Is the recent surge of Monero genuine or a potential pump-and-dump?

Monero has surged rapidly in market value over the past two weeks, reaching nearly US$200 million market cap and overtaking Dash – another dominant privacy-focused cryptocurrency – to become the fifth most valuable digital currency in the market today.

In short, experts presume the rise of Monero to be completely genuine and legitimate. In fact, a similar argument was presented earlier this year in February and in mid-2015, when Monero displayed a substantial increase in its market cap in a short period of time.

Thus, throughout February this crypto coin’s cap increased from around $5 million to US$10 million in and both holders of Monero and other cryptocurrency community members were questioning its legitimacy, stating that the pattern of the price indicated a pump-and-dump.

“Xmr [Monero] rose quickly, and even quicker today. When eth did same recently, many said it is just a scam, pump a dump thing to get noobs to spend their btc to eth pumpers. What about xmr current sudden rise? Are people starting to see its real value, or its just pumping and dumping season for xmr now? What are your opinions?” one Monero investor commented.

However, Monero began to display serious momentum when ShadowCash, another privacy-focused cryptocurrency, was exposed for its broken mathematical and cryptographic systems. After the news regarding the scam-like structure of ShadowCash began to circulate, investors and privacy-focused cryptocurrency enthusiasts naturally turned to other alternatives.

Since then, the legitimate cryptography of Monero and the efforts of its development team to bring actual innovation to digital currency as an alternative to bitcoin were publicly reported by mainstream media, which pushed the price further.

Some Monero users also state that the technical component of the cryptocurrency has been a big factor in the gradual increase in its value, which seemed unexpected for users that were not aware of the legitimacy of the digital currency.

“Monero has been massively underpriced for a long time. I think most people understood that a correction was more or less inevitable,” said one Monero user. “Pre-GUI release the 'proper' trading range for XMR should be between 0.004 and 0.005. Post-GUI release you should really expect the 0.01 all-time high to be broken, although this depends on development variables.”

Although the price surge of Monero seemed like a pump to many members of the cryptocurrency community, it was anticipated and presumed by experts and developers that profoundly understood the technology behind Monero.

Joseph Young