Forget Bitcoin. There a new digital currency that is surging as online drug-dealers begin adopting it to conduct business with more anonymity.The two-year-old currency Monero has more than quadrupled this month after gaining support from prominent websites that anonymously peddle drugs. It spiked to as much as $10 on Sunday after AlphaBay, one of the most popular sites for buying drugs like liquid LSD and hybrid cannabis, said last week it will begin accepting the currency on Sept. 1. The total value of all Monero in circulation pushed past $100 million on Monday, up from about $25 million at the end of last month, according to coincap.io.
Following demand from the community, and considering the security features of Monero, we decided to add it to our marketplace, AlphaBay announced on Reddit last week. We expect this to cause a spike in the price, so if you are an investor, now is the time to purchase Monero.
Bitcoin, the most popular digital currency in the world with a total value of $9.1 billion, also allows users to move funds discreetly and uses a network of miners to verify the authenticity of each trade. But its privacy has come under threat as governments and private investigators increase their ability to track transactions across the bitcoin network and trace funds to bank accounts ultimately used to convert digital assets to and from traditional currencies like U.S. dollars.
Monero similarly uses a network of miners to verify its trades, but mixes multiple transactions together to make it harder to trace the genesis of the funds. It also adopts dual-key stealth addresses, which make it difficult for third-parties to pinpoint who received the funds.
Full Story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-29/new-digital-currency-spikes-after-giving-criminals-more-secrecy http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-29/new-digital-currency-spikes-after-giving-criminals-more-secrecy