Monero is the first privacy coin. In July of 2012 Nicolas van Saberhagen (a pseudonym) launched Bytecoin as a counter to Bitcoin's lack of privacy. In April 2014 someone known only as Thankful_for_today forked Bytecoin and launched a new coin they called Bitmonero. Shortly after that, Riccardo Spagni, David Latapie, and five other anonymous developers took over as the core development team of Bitmonero and renamed it to just "Monero."
Fun trivia, "monero" means "coin" in Esperanto.
Monero is guided by a few key ideals: Privacy, security, decentralization, and fairness.
Monero was early to implement the privacy technologies of ring signatures and stealth addresses. Ring signatures obscure the sender by grouping the actual transaction with at least 15 other decoy transactions. Stealth addresses obscure the receiver by recording a transaction on the blockchain with a one use proxy address instead of the address of the actual receiver. In 2017 Monero implemented Ring Confidential Transaction (Ring CT) which obscures the transaction amount. In 2018 Monero implemented "Bulletproofs" which improved scalability.
Monero took steps to be ASIC resistant from the start, but in 2019 Monero switched to the RandomX mining algorithm which increased its ASIC resistance. This means that Monero can only be mined using a CPU or a GPU. In contrast, miners quickly lost the ability to mine Bitcoin with a mere CPU or GPU and must use hardware built specifically for Bitcoin mining called, ASICs. This helps Monero to remain decentralized and within the reach of hobby miners. These days only large well funded players can hope to mine Bitcoin profitably, but just about anyone can mine Monero. I'm mining Monero myself on an older PC. It ain't much, but it's honest work.
Riccardo Spagni, aka "Fluffy Pony" was the leader of Monero for five years but stepped down in December of 2019. He stated that he stepped down partly to preserve the democratic nature of Monero, to reduce the risk of one person being a chokepoint, and partly because he was overworked.
Fluffy Pony has been a famous cryptocurrency personality for many years. In 2021 James Edwards accused Fluffy Pony of being an Interpol informant and of giving the authorities the ability to track Monero transactions. Fluffy Pony denied the allegations and accused James Edwards of being a scammer. Fluffy Pony admitted that Interpol had contacted him asking for cooperation, but that he absolutely refused to cooperate in any way. Fluffy Pony was arrested in the US in 2021, held for one month, released, and then extradited to South Africa in 2023 to face charges of fraud related to a business he had run in 2009. The trial has been delayed several times and I could find no resolution as of the time of this writing.
I don't know this for certain, but my instinct tells me that Fluffy Pony is telling the truth and that Monero is not traceable, for reasons I'll discuss later in this article.
Sources:
Monero History: https://www.hardmoneyhistory.com/history-of-monero/
Riccardo Spagni: https://iq.wiki/wiki/riccardo-spagni
Fluffy Pony Controversy: https://beincrypto.com/monero-founder-refutes-allegations-interpol-trace-funds/
How Does Monero Work?
Monero is a proof of work cryptocurrency. It launched with an initial supply of 18.4 million coins. Unlike Bitcoin, Monero has no hard cap and is currently in its "tail emission" phase where block rewards are a constant 0.6278 XMR per block. A new block is issued approximately every two minutes, for 720 blocks per day, meaning 432 new XMR coins are created daily. As of this writing there are approximately 18,446,000 XMR in circulation.
**Monero's high level of privacy is based on four technologies. **
- Ring Signatures obscure the sender by mixing each transaction with 15 other decoy transactions.
- Stealth addresses obscure the receiver by creating a one time use address for each receipt.
- Ring Confidential Transactions obscure the amount of XMR being transacted.
- Dandelion++ Protocol obscures IP addresses of people interacting with the Monero network.
Monero prioritizes privacy and these privacy measures make the Monero blockchain larger and slower than other blockchains. Monero has a dynamic block size limit so Transactions Per Second (TPS) are hard to pin down, but it is estimated that Monero has a maximum TPS of 1,700. For comparison, Solana, a fast blockchain, has an estimated maximum TPS of 65,000.
Sources:
Coin Gecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/monero
Privacy Tech: https://exolix.com/blog/is-monero-xmr-traceable
Scientific Article on Monero: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/monero
Is Monero Traceable?
**Short answer, no. **
Personally, I bet the NSA could trace it if it wanted to. However, in 2020 the IRS offered a $650,000 bounty for anyone who could break Monero's privacy and so far nobody has collected. Europol has expressed concerns that Monero's privacy features are a real problem. Chain Analysis and other crypto tracing companies have never had success tracking Monero transactions.
There are several other privacy coins but none have been around as long as Monero and none have the proven privacy of Monero either. ZCash was beating Monero until recently, but with ZCash, privacy is an option. With Monero, privacy is mandatory.
Privacy does have some drawbacks. If an institution claims to have 100,000 Bitcoin, that claim is easily proven or disproven by third parties using chain analysis. If an institution claims to have 100,000 Monero, you've just got to take their word for it.
Sources:
Is Monero Traceable: https://blog.noones.com/en/blog/is-monero-traceable-no-and-heres-what-you-actually-need-to-understand
Recent Price Action
ZCash has been leading Monero as the worlds sexiest privacy coin for some time, but Monero recently took the lead. This was due to drama among the ZCash governing team. Long story short, they resigned amidst a dispute. Monero is much more decentralized than ZCash and it's perceived to be impervious to damage from a few individuals walking away from the project.
ZCash, Monero, and other privacy coins have enjoyed a boom in 2025 due to increased financial tyranny mostly from the EU. But also, there are anti-privacy coin moves being made by crypto-hubs such as Dubai. Even in the US, the Clarity Act has language that could be interpreted as threatening to privacy coins. These threats on privacy only make people want it more, and Monero is the only coin proven to provide it.
As of this writing Monero is worth $612. It recently hit an all time high above $700. Monero's current market cap is $11,296,060,007. Over the past year (2025) Monero has increased in dollar value by 181%.
Sources:
**Monero Flips ZCash: ** https://coinpaper.com/13634/monero-flips-zcash-xmr-now-1-privacy-coin-eyes-new-ath
Why Monero Hit An All Time High: https://beincrypto.com/monero-price-hits-all-time-high-privacy-demand/
Coin Gecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/monero
Conclusion
There's no way to be 100% sure, but I believe Monero is untraceable. I put my money, meager as it is, where my mouth is. It is interesting to note that back in 2019 when Bitcoin Maxis were at their absolute maxiest, most would concede that the only alt-coin worth considering was Monero.
I was concerned about Fluffy Pony being a fed, but with the research I did to write this, I'm satisfied that it was a false accusation.
Caution is warranted however because even though Monero itself is untraceable, if you are already under surveillance, there are ways to infer your Monero activity by looking at other things you may not be practicing perfect OPSEC on.
Monero Official Website
This post is a reblog from my website: https://fleefiat.com/monero-xmr/