How to Trade Monero (XMR)

A pseudonymous author, Nicolas van Saberhagen, published the CryptoNote whitepaper, describing privacy and anonymity as the 'most significant aspects of electronic cash' and criticizing Bitcoin's traceability as a 'critical flaw.'

A group of developers on the Bitcointalk forum forked BitMonero (a cryptocurrency created by 'thankful_for_today') due to disagreements over its direction. They renamed it Monero, which means 'coin' in Esperanto, and launched it fairly—with no premine or instamine.

Monero introduced RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions), which encrypts transaction amounts. Previously, only the sender and receiver were hidden. Since then, all Monero transactions have been fully private by default.

As XMR's main emission reached ~18 million coins, the system transitioned to 'tail emission' at a permanent 0.6 XMR per block. This ensures miners always have an incentive to secure the network, based on the philosophy that zero emission equals an insecure network.

Binance delisted Monero in February 2024 citing regulatory compliance issues, following the lead of several countries and other exchanges. XMR remains tradable via DEXs, Bisq, TradeOgre, and peer-to-peer platforms.