Here at Aquarian Metals we’re money maximalists. We tend to focus on precious metals because, well, they’re money. Knowing what money is and what it isn’t is how we understand the larger financial picture when it comes to economics, politics, and even history. And because we’re money maximalists we think it’s important to understand that it is the properties of money which makes something money and not the other way around.
As we’ve seen with our article called What Money Isn’t: Will the Real Money Please Stand Up?, when an asset doesn’t have all the properties of money, it isn’t money. Just as if you removed the tires and the engine of a car, it ceases to be a car. Without the physical attributes to make it a car, it’s just a heap of scrap.
Understanding that the properties come first is how it’s possible to discover other assets which share those same monetary properties.
It is our assessment that Monero is money. We’ve briefly mentioned Monero in a couple articles but we haven’t actually covered it.
So here it is.
What is Monero?
There’s a tendency out there by those in the crypto space to make cryptocurrencies seem so technical as to be incomprehensible to even the most savvy among us. This is partly due to the people involved in their creation and those who trade it. They just aren’t in the game of making things simple to understand for others. That’s why we’re here.
At it’s core, Monero is money- specifically, digital money. We’ll see why here in a second, but that’s everything in a nutshell that you need to understand about it from a financial perspective. All the technical jargon about its protocol, how its governance structure works, its tail emission are all like asking the question “What is gold” and answering, “Well it’s mined using large machinery and has a yearly inflation rate while it’s atomic weight on the periodic chart is blah blah blah”. A laundry list of technical facts about something doesn’t tell us why we should care about it.
Monero is a cryptocurrency with all the properties of money and has the added benefit of being anonymous to use, like gold, silver, and even cash. This means you can use it like digital cash and hold it anonymously like gold.
The Problem with bitcoin
Cryptocurrencies with blockchains have something called a ledger. It’s a list of all transactions between parties- it’s fundamentally no different than an accounting ledger of all transactions. The problem with the typical cryptocurrency ledger is that nearly all ledger’s are completely public. This means, you can go to a website, called a blockchain explorer, and view someone’s wallet address and assets. Here’s an address of Satoshi, the mysterious creator of bitcoin. Blockchain explorers allow you to enter the wallet address of anyone that has bitcoin and peer into their wallet and see, not only how much they have, but the entire history of the bitcoin within.
As privacy advocates this is a huge red flag for securing your right to financial privacy.
Bitcoin, being the largest cryptocurrency by marketcap, is the most surveilled cryptocurrency making its ledger a treasure trove of data for anyone or any organization who seeks to track and trace people en masse. Using bitcoin is risky because these organizations’ surveillance software is constantly recording every single bitcoin transaction. And if they’ve managed to figure out who you are and correlate it with the wallets you use, they will be able to track the bitcoin for the rest of your life. It doesn’t matter if you transfer it to someone else, they’ll always know the history of the bitcoin and that you owned a specific amount in some wallet. It’s no different than the entire world having a look at your bank account balance 24/7.
Pretty scary.
From a monetary perspective this means bitcoin isn’t fungible. Each bitcoin, or its smaller unit the ‘satoshi’, has a history uniquely identifying them. Each individual satoshi unit can be tracked and your identity with it. This is a tyrants wet dream.
Let’s say you received some bitcoin but didn’t know its history. If some known criminal used that bitcoin to do something, the government can “taint” that bitcoin by keeping tabs on it. If you received it, you could potentially be subject to personal surveillance, interrogation, or worse. Exchanges already use software which detects tainted coins and will permanently delete the accounts of those using them- they may even reveal your identity to the authorities! It doesn’t matter if you did nothing wrong, you hold tainted bitcoin.
This means 1 bitcoin is not the same as 1 bitcoin. This means it’s not fungible. This is also true of Ethereum, Litecoin, Cardano, Polkadot, and thousands of other cryptocurrencies with public ledgers.
Gold and silver can’t track you. They’re fungible. No history. No identifying marks. 100% anonymous. Just money.
The Birth of Monero
Monero (symbol: $XMR) emerged in 2014 as a result of the cryptocurrency ecosystem not providing a real protection against surveillance. It was noted by Satoshi that bitcoin’s transparent ledger could leads to privacy problems and suggested some potential ways of implementing privacy. In fact, some of his suggestions for bitcoin were adopted by Monero developers.
Monero also has a blockchain like bitcoin but its ledger uses sophisticated mathematical algorithms to hide transactions and the contents of your wallet from the public. This means Monero is 100% anonymous and easy to use to like digital cash.
How do we know it’s anonymous? A few years ago the IRS, with it’s near infinite resources, put up a large reward to anyone who can reveal the transaction history on the Monero blockchain. To date, no one has claimed the reward. It seems unlikely that it’s going to happen anytime soon considering the Monero developers are regularly updating the privacy to the software making it more robust and resistant to surveillance.
This means 1 XMR is equal to 1 XMR. Just like gold and silver.
Monero is Money
We’ve done several articles detailing what the properties of money are and why they’re so important. With those properties in mind, we can plainly see that Monero has all the properties of money that gold and silver have with the added convenience of digital cash. No other cryptocurrency can boast that. If you want to learn more about the nature of money or need a refresher check out our 2-part article entitled A Beginners Guide: Is it Money or is it Currency?
How to get Monero
Governments aren’t too keen on any technology that can prevent them from spying on you. This is why they hate encryption technologies as much as they do (check out the great short series on the history of encryption).
Naturally, cryptocurrency exchanges are wary to carry a money that might be made illegal. Thus far, Monero is not illegal. There has been no congressional, presidential, or even statewide effort to ban coins which preserve privacy. We personally believe it’s not going to happen because it would have to attack encryption- and that’s a war the surveillance state has continued to lose since the 1990’s.
That said, your options are somewhat limited in terms of where to get your hands on Monero. It’s not impossible, but with a little due diligence you too can hold digital money.
Buy Monero
Kraken is a crypto currency exchange which allows users to purchase Monero with their US dollars. Keep in mind, they will collect your personal information in order to make an account with them. That said, once you move your Monero off their exchange and into your own wallet, that’s the end of the tracking and surveillance. It’s sort of like buying more than $3000 worth of gold or silver. You can buy that much, but the business will generally be forced to report on your purchase using your personal details to some 3-letter financial agency. The moment you get the gold or silver in your hands, that’s the end of the surveillance. It’s the same with Monero.
What you do with the gold, silver, or Monero after you have it is up to you. We don’t condone any illegal activity but we understand that you have a human right to protect your privacy and do what you want with your own property.
Do Business with Monero
Sell things for Monero. It seems straight forward enough. But if you sell goods or provide services, you are well within your rights as a business owner to request payment in whatever form you like. There are Monero marketplaces where people buy and sell goods and services for $XMR. It’s easy to use like digital cash and it protects your financial right to privacy!
Using Monero
Using Monero is easy. The best place to start is getting a Monero wallet. We’re not being sponsored by any of the products we mention in this section. We’re just did our due diligence.
Mobile Wallet
A reputable mobile wallet for Monero is Cake Wallet. They have a lot of great features and it’s very easy to use for receiving, sending, and more.
Hardware Wallet
If you’re looking to really secure your Monero in something that’s nearly as good as a vault, try a hardware wallet. There are two we trust and those are Ledger and Trezor.
Hardware wallets are essential to have for your Monero in the same way having a safe is vital to hold your precious metals.
Wrapping Up
Monero is money. When it comes to monetary properties for a cryptocurrency, there is no second best. It’s anonymous, easy to use, uncensorable, and unconfiscatable.
We believe Monero is a great addition to a portfolio of precious metals especially when we look at it from the perspective of money. Obviously, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose and be smart. Monero, like any asset, carries risk.
We think the future is bright for Monero.
If you want to dive into the Monero rabbit hole, there are some other great resources including:
• A great live talk called Monero Means Money (fun fact it was #1 at the US Box Office during the second week of April 2020)
• The main Monero website
• Monero Market is an online marketplace to trade goods using Monero.
• If you’re looking to buy Monero from others anonymously check out LocalMonero.co
