The Bitcoin Competitor Beloved by the Alt-Right and Criminals

The whole point of KYC, which is used across the financial industry, is to verify a customer’s identity to prevent illegal activities such as money laundering or funding terror activities.

In particular, Monero is not a good investment. As Hayden put it, “Monero is not a good currency to own. It is extraordinarily volatile.” The value of Monero has ranged from a low of $109 to a high of $517.62 per coin over the past year, and it can experience significant shifts in value over the course of mere hours. Sure, all cryptos are relatively volatile, but over the past 80 days Monero has experienced much more volatility in price compared with more mainstream coins like Bitcoin. Just days after reaching its value peak in May, the coin cratered in value by hundreds of dollars. But even if you get past this, Hayden notes that the currency is hard to get, as the exchanges selling it are often niche and dodgy—you don’t just find Monero on Coinbase or many of the other major cryptocurrency exchanges.

So, its real appeal is to those who want to keep their transactions secret. Government organizations have certainly struggled to deal with the privacy coin. For instance, in September 2020 the IRS offered up to $625,000 for anyone who could crack Monero and track payments on the service. There is some room to believe that technologists will be able to better track payments in the future; Squire explained that “There are some new technologies coming out that … promised to try to fix this. But of course, they’re going to be super expensive and only available in law enforcement.” For example, blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace released a Monero tracing tool developed with Department of Homeland Security funding—which costs $16,000 per user for access. Moreover, many researchers have claimed the tool doesn’t actually work.