Monero (XMR) is the most important privacy-focused cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin, needless to say, is the quintessential crypto symbol of privacy, but which will be the most secure?
The diatribe over which digital currency is the most secure has been holding sway for a while, at least since Monero has existed, let’s look together at the strengths of each.
Summary
Traceability in the Monero network
Monero’s traceability is the most secure of the privacy crypto assets and allows unprecedented levels of privacy, but now the debate rages over which one is more secure between XMR and BTC.
Andy Greenberg, Cybersecurity Guru talks about it pressed by journalist Laura Shin.
Taking Alphabay, a marketplace on the darknet, as a sample, Greenberg said:
“Alphabay is back online and now only accepts Monero.”
Essentially on the darknet, payments can be accepted in a very secure way thanks to Monero.
The block explorer hides information about each and every transaction involving the Monero security token.
Even though some Bitcoin transactions have been traced over time, never could the sender and recipient be traced except in overt cases.
Transactions are recorded in an ad hoc list that can be revealed on the block explorer but this is so difficult to trace that it is considered almost impossible.
Andy Greenberg believes that Monero has privacy standards that are “much much harder” to breach than its ancestor Bitcoin.
XMR better conceals transactions by hiding them in ad hoc cryptographic paths to make it harder to trace the source of the data.
This makes the same job for hackers and law enforcement agencies really tough.
“It may seem like this golden age of cryptocurrency tracking is coming to an end and people are getting educated, but I think maybe it’s fair to see it as another phase, another step in this cat and mouse [cryptocurrency tracking ] game.”
Greenberg continues.
While XMR seems to be ahead of digital gold on the difficulty of tracing transactions, the consensus view was not always this.
Greenberg himself on another occasion, pressed by Paul Ducklin had stated that in the case of both Monero and Bitcoin if desired it is possible to trace transactions, although with difficulty.
Greenberg, at the time relying on research by Chainalysis, had stated that transactions with Monero can be discovered 60% of the time.
This report showed that Monero is not entirely untraceable and just as Bitcoin can have flaws that leak sensitive information.
In Chainalysis’ report, law enforcement was able to find comfort in that it was shown that anything is possible with the right tools and given enough time.
Although transactions in XMR are very difficult to trace this is not something impossible.
Price of XMR and BTC
Meanwhile, the price of XMR is down 71% from the all time high of €540 reached in 2018.
Today Monero quotes €143.54 gaining a timid 0.25% in the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, stops just below 22k (€21997.84) slightly down from yesterday.
Digital gold leaves 0.69% of its market value on the field despite coming from a week of lateralization.
When considering the beginning of 2023 as the timeframe, BTC has gained 10% including 2% in February.
Image credits given by QuoteInspector
