Monero news, despite their controversial and divisive nature, often prove the efficiency and excellent design of the privacy cryptocurrencies. Of all the confidentiality-oriented coins on the market, XMR is by far the fairest: it grew organically from a the CryptoNote whitepaper presented by a pseudonymous individual named Nicolas van Saberhagen, it escaped the despotic rule of early developer thankful_for_today, and it became the private and egalitarian currency that it was designed to be.
Monero (the Esperanto word for "coin") is so good at offering confidential transactions that it often gets depicted in mainstream media as the cryptocurrency of choice for computer hackers, drug lords, and money launderers. Yet according the the cypherpunk ethos, it chooses to provide uncompromising privacy by taking into account fundamental human rights and the natural tendency of humans to pull the drapes on their private affairs. Criminality is not the rule, but the exception which the media often times chooses to portray for sensationalism. Otherwise, privacy is very much required in order to enable free trade in totalitarian regimes, empower oppressed minorities with financial sovereignty, and help investigation journalists continue their work without fearing for their lives.
Technically speaking, Monero makes use of Elliptic Curve cryptography features and one-time ring signatures. These two qualities are meant to provide transactions that are both untraceable and unlinkable. The proof of work (POW) system is conceived to eliminate ASICs and favor the "one CPU, one vote" egalitarian principle. Monero also uses a scarcity model, with mining rewards being reduced every year until 2023 (when the amount of annual rewards will become fixed at 158.000). Yet unlike Bitcoin, XMR does not have a finite supply and isn't really designed with scarcity in mind. Monero is less of a wetdream of Austrian economists and more of a project that's backed by cypherpunk ethos.
Furthermore, there's a lot going on with this cryptocurrency project in terms of development, as new innovations in cryptography are encouraged and the community isn't as worried about the price of the token as it is with the overall privacy of the transactions. Correspondingly, Tari Labs currently works on a MimbleWimble sidechain and there are lots of interesting experiments to keep Monero safe from the eyes of our digital Big Brother.
Crypto Insider will cover the newest and most relevant Monero news, but also bring you exclusive interviews with developers and influential community members who understand what's going on better than everyone else. Stay tuned for some really cypherpunk articles!