Attackers of this kind are supposedly “big game hunting” large-scale organizations with deep pockets to extract ”the most money possible” out of these firms.
Monero (XMR) Readies For A Breakout As It Touches Important Milestone
Privacy coin Monero (XMR) usually spends its time in the shadows, which is exactly the way its community likes it. Till date, it is still impossible to penetrate the privacy that the digital asset offers, making it the go-to choice for investors who are trying to keep their crypto transactions and holdings a secret. Recently though, the cryptocurrency is breaking out onto the radars of more investors as it shatters an important milestone.
As more crypto users are discovering their transactions are not as hidden as they might have thought, they are moving towards coins like Monero that offers the privacy they desire. This has seen the number of users rise on the blockchain and total transactions carried out has soared, more than doubling in just the first quarter of 2022.
Monero (XMR) Surpasses 20 Million Transactions
Monero is no doubt the leading privacy coin in the crypto space and it has once again proven this with its recent milestone. The coin seems to have exploded in popularity in just the first two months of 2022 as the number of transactions carried out has doubled from 2021. Last year, the number of transactions recorded was sitting at 8.65 million. With less than two months into the new year, the volume of transactions tells a new story.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Hits Two-week High Imitating The Stock Rally
Growing almost 150% in just a matter of months, the number of Monero transactions has crossed 20 million. Data from Blockchair shows that there have been a total of 2,554,175 blocks mined over the lifetime of the privacy digital asset, landing on more than 20,023,000 transactions carried out in the same time period.
This number is important for a digital asset like Monero whose sole utility is being untraceable. It spells more usage from crypto users as they move towards keeping their crypto footprints hidden. It also points towards more adoption of the coin, and as the market rises out of the ashes of the last burn, it may mean significant growth for the digital asset in relation to price.
Growing With The Market
Like most cryptocurrencies, the price of Monero (XMR) had suffered when the market had crashed. This saw the cryptocurrency crashing from its high of almost $525 to the low $140, around which its value has trended for the past week. However, with the recent market recovery going into last weekend, Monero has followed along and has posted a recovery, up 16% in the past 24 hours alone.
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This does not mean that the digital asset is out of the woods though. Sentiments around the cryptocurrency continues to skew greatly in the bearish territory, and sell signals continue to overpower the asset. According to data from Barchat, Monero’s sell indicators have taken hold with 88% pointing towards sell. The 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day MACD Oscillator also point towards sell.
XMR recovers to $176 | Source: XMRUSD on TradingView.com
On the short term though, the 20-day moving average has turned towards buy. Coupled with the increased adoption and growing volume recorded, this trend is expected to continue and drive the price of the digital asset up in its wake. With a strong close above $180 by end of day, next significant support will be at $200, at which point, bulls will be able to sink their claws firmly into the asset.
Featured image from CoinJournal, chart from TradingView.com
Despite Red Bitcoin, On-Chain Signals Flip Green
Bitcoin on-chain signals have remained green despite the recent red week. Bitcoin’s price had taken a plunge towards $40K and had brought a lot of losses with it as billions of dollars in long positions were liquidated on December 4th in one of the sharpest declines of the year. Mostly this has brought down a number of metrics associated with the asset but on-chain signals remain resistant.
On-chain data all ranging from miner revenues, transaction fees, hashrate, and daily transaction volumes have all shown positive trends for bitcoin. None of this has been affected by the price decline.
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Hashrate Continues Recovery Trend
Bitcoin hashrate had taken a big heat with the China crackdown on mining that took place earlier in the year. The region had gone from providing about 70% of the mining power to almost zero in a matter of weeks, leaving the hashrate to suffer greatly. This has since been rectified as bitcoin miners have found new locations to resume their mining activities.
BTC hashrate recovers post-market crash | Source: Arcane Research
Since then, hashrate has been gradually picking back up and in the past week saw a significant increase. Bitcoin hashrate is up for the past seven days after the first difficulty reduction following ten difficulty adjustments. As the difficulty has dropped, so has the profitability of mining activities increased. Given this, more miners have gotten back in the game and set up their mining rigs once more, leading to a rise in hashrate.
Arcane Research also reported that this increased hashrate has led to an increase in block production rate. As more miners come back on board, an average of 6.46 blocks have been created each hour in the past week. This represents a significant increase of 11% in the same time frame.
BTC loses footing at $50,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Bitcoin Transaction Fees Rise
Bitcoin transactions fees have remained low through the past weeks, but there was a recorded increase in fees in the past seven days. On average, bitcoin transaction fees grew by 33%. This growth however does not do much for miner revenue. Even though fees are up, they are still relatively meager and only bring in about 1.7% of the total miner revenues.
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Average transaction value also jumped in the past week. As investors rushed to sell their holdings during the crash, the average transaction volume climbed by 8.3%. This was mostly due to holders who hold larger volumes moving their BTC to exchanges to sell, not only increasing average transaction volume, but also transaction fees at the same time.
Bitcoin daily miner revenues in the first week of December was $52,271,223 compared to daily revenues of $49,975,895 from the previous week. Fees per day, as well as transactions per day, were up at $891,499 and 276,680 respectively.
Featured image from PSU Watch, charts from Arcane Research and TradingView.com
