For a while I wanted to invest into Monero, not so much for the gains in the short to medium term, but for the long run. I believe that within this crypto circus we dwell in, one can truly find ways to store one’s fortune in the most private and secure way, and in complete and utter contrast to the methods the bank system in the old world, have forcibly put upon us. I am of the opinion that we now live in an age, where we have given up way too much information of our own private financial life, information which many times is used against us by those who have obtained it. The old world has noticed us, and slowly but surely, is penetrating this world, spreading it’s destructive ways, trying to gain control.
I feel now is the right time to start to move forward with my original plan, and so I started to really dig into the world of all those projects that not only provide speed and convenience at low fees, but also privacy at the levels I feel are required for the present and of course for the future. I took a very close look at Monero, ZCash, Dash, Pivx, and Bytecoin BCN, and though they each offer an overall very good level of privacy, they lacked one thing that to me seems so trivial, yet was not included in any of them : TOR !
> Full table comparing all coins : http://imgur.com/a/nodcN
What I felt was missing was for the wallet itself to run within TOR, the anonymity network, in order to make sure that all in and out traffic from one’s wallet, goes through the TOR network. This in exchange, provides another level of solid anonymity on-line, censorship circumvention and network privacy, one that has not been broken and is used and tested daily by millions.
“Tor hides the network traffic to and from your computer when you transact on the blockchain. Without using something like Tor, an actor with the ability to monitor a large proportion of the Internet (e.g. your government) can easily tell where the transaction originated, by seeing where the first broadcast of the transaction appeared. By using Tor this type of tracking is made virtually impossible.” – quoting the lead developer of Spectrecoin.
Three projects came up that provide what I was looking for: VERGE (XVG), Spectrecoin (XSPEC) and Signatum (SIGC). The latter is now obsolete (“The dev abandoned project after too much pressure for a proper release. We have removed SIGC from the pool and cut our losses." bitcointalk.org/ August 18, 2017), which leaves two projects, both I found to be very active with a serious supporting community behind them, and with an impressive outlook and development so far.
After spending time with both lead developers of both teams, as well as getting a better idea from their communities, on how the projects have progressed in the recent period, my conclusions are, that they are pretty similar. Both are led by very dedicated developers, who have a deep knowledge of the topic of crypto privacy, and who are eager to deliver the perfect solution and please their hungry, loyal and excited communities. The XSPEC community especially impressed me with their friendly attitude and willingness to share information. The technical specs on both are impressive, with the VERGE adding i2p support and a few more neat options, and XSPEC providing working stealth addresses (yes, your address does not show up on the explorer!) with extra features in the near future.
I asked the lead developer of Spectrecoin, Jansen Garrick, to provide a little explanation regarding the stealth address included as part of the project “Spectre coins can be "minted" to Spectre tokens. When the tokens are spent, the input of the transaction is a ring signature over many tokens of the same value held by different people. This makes it impossible to know which of the tokens was the actual source of the funds.. Spectre tokens are held in "stealth" addresses.”
Another interesting unique feature, or even, bonus, is that there are no fees associated to sending XSPEC, and of course.. it does go from X to Y in 30 seconds on average!
At this stage, I was left with one point only to truly use as my final decision maker: value of the coin and it’s market cap. :
In the past week, XSPEC has risen by 138.60% , and in the past month by 194.55%. Market cap is 13 million! Potential is huge. The entire “privacy coin” sector is gaining fast in the last week, but all of them have large to huge market caps, which does in some sense, limit the size of the gains one can expect. I will type this again: $13,000,000 market cap! Current price is below 70 cents!
Based on all my findings, as well as a raw view of the coin’s financial situation, is it clear to me that Spectrecoin (XSPEC) is the privacy coin I want to invest in now. On a technological standpoint, it is impressive compared to the other five big coins. With it’s tiny market cap and steady growth, I feel the potential here is huge for both the short to medium run, and of course, the very long run, where it is important, in my opinion, to be able to achieve some level of privacy in this crypto circus we dwell in.
Trading here : https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Exchange/?market=XSPEC_BTC
Reddit: /r/XSPEC
Credit: martingore2017 reddit