When I first heard about Monero I was at an early Bitcoin conference around mid 2014. When I struck up a conversation with a guy who's presentation I enjoyed I remember he said:

You should really find out more about Monero - tech is very interesting. Don't necessarily invest in it now as it has gone up in price quickly, but keep your eye on it.

I don't know if it was the unfamiliar sounding name of it or I just didn't worry too much about my Bitcoin privacy, but I ignored it.

Luckily for me, Monero had a fairly steady down trend in 2014.



About one year ago a friend on Facebook convinced me to look into Dash for its privacy features and node reward system. I did just that and jumped straight in, buying several thousand dollars worth having just only watched the snazzy marketing videos - which of course turned out to be a costly mistake - but I cut my losses quickly.

Spending some time with the Dash community, however, led me to discover Monero. I also saw American Pegasus do a drunken AMA on Reddit's wallstreetbets, which led me to Monero's official website:

https://getmonero.org

Monero is a secure, private, untraceable currency.

As you can see from the recent chart below (showing from ~ December 2015 - July 2016), it is in an uptrend:



The Monero advantage

With Bitcoin, did you ever stop to think about how strange it is that anyone you transact with, or anyone at all really, can potentially discover how much bitcoins you have?

If you don't hold many bitcoins, this may not concern you. But, if you are dealing with significant amounts of money or regularly trade with strangers then this is worrisome!

Monero addresses cannot be searched on its blockchain!

Give it a try! Here's my Monero address (broken into two lines because it's too long for this page!):

45GoCF3iE9ZfUsmQe3o7mu6XmoNo7L7SA6jHeoiXCX5z3JQ2B36TaUWT3cCsa

sSQDDFC9vTketNRkAncQCd6g6HoTP5oHr4

And here's a Monero blockchain explorer

So if you want to try out Monero, set up a web wallet (for small amounts only) at MyMonero.com

For larger amounts, there is a detailed cold storage guide here. or you could do what I've done and download the node and flash a Trezor with the Monero firmware.

