The privacy coin Monero (XMR) is leaving most of the crypto market in the dust.
XMR, the 34th-ranked crypto asset by market cap, is trading at $272.05 at time of writing, up more than 76% in the past two months.
Compared to Bitcoin (BTC), which is up about 7.7% over the same time period, and Ethereum (ETH), which is up about 17.3%, Monero is leading the pack.
Monero has some big developments on the horizon, recently announcing it will undergo a network upgrade on July 16th. The hard fork aims to improve the network’s security, privacy, performance and overall resilience while keeping its proof of work consensus protocol.
Among other new features, an upgraded “Bulletproofs+” algorithm is designed to reduce the typical transaction size by about 5-7%, as well as improve typical verification performance by around the same percentage. Wallet sync times are also intended to reduce by 30-40%.
Monero is up 7.4% in the past 24 hours and nearly 16% compared to where it was priced one week ago.
XMR isn’t the only privacy coin that’s witnessed gains over the past couple of months. Zcash (ZEC) is up by about 56% since February 20th, with popular analyst Altcoin Sherpa recently saying ZEC is primed to continue its rally in a strong way.
“ZEC: No clear trend on the ZEC/BTC pair, higher lows and lower highs. Potential breakout depending on how you interpret it. The ZEC/USD pair looks great still, and I think it goes to $250 eventually.”
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