Vol. 01, No. 19 December 26, 2017 January 1, 2018

Performance

• XMR Market Cap: $5.60b
• XMR Ranking: 11 (-1)

Happy New Year!

Credit to @helloluis

Happy New Year to all the readers! To reflect on how far Monero has come this year, Monero started the year at a price of $13.78 (~$177m market cap)! That means in 2017 Monero increased in value by ~2,533% to ~$5.1b vs Bitcoin increasing in value by 1,469%. Hopefully 2018 will be another fruitful year for all Monero supporters!

Monero at the N.A. Bitcoin Conference

Fluffypony will be presenting at the North American Bitcoin Conference on Jan. 17-19. He will be speaking during two sessions, first titled “THE FUTURE OF MONERO,” and the second titled “WHY PEOPLE SHOULD TROLL MORE.”

MRL Monthly Report

Sarang Noether of the Monero Research Lab posted a December monthly report. He discussed bulletproofs, multisigs, SPECTRE, educational outreach opportunities, and efficient zk-SNARKS without trusted setup.

Monero @ 34c3 Leipzig

The Monero Hardware Wallet team presented at 34c3 Leipzig, discussing the prototypes for the dedicated Hardware wallet. The hardware will be ready for release in March / April and will probably cost $10-20. You can check out some of the presentation pictures here. On this topic, u/anhdres and u/grigo submitted Monero hardware wallet logo ideas.

The Monerujo team presented at 34c3 Leipzig this past week. The full presentation should be available online later at https://media.ccc.de/.

u/amiuhle posted a Kasisto Alpha 2 preview (which was shown at 34c3). Kasisto is a POS App to accept Monero. No third parties required, it connects to a view-only wallet that can be hosted anywhere (eg a Raspberry Pi in your basement or a public server on the internet).

Monero even got mentioned during Zcash’s talk by Zooko, to which Fluffypony tweeted,

BlockTower Discussed Monero on CNBC

Ari Paul, BlockTower Capital CIO and co-founder briefly discussed Monero on CNBC. He claims it is his favorite alt coin, full transcript below.

Reporter: ... Whats your favorite crypto currency at this point, in terms of upside?

Ari Paul: In terms of favorite crypto currency, its hard to pick one, but one that i think has real fundamental value aside from bitcoin is Monero. Monero is a privacy focused crypto currency with very strong engineering.

Reporter: Isn't that the one used by criminals?

Ari Paul: Everything is used by criminals including the US Dollar and the Euro.

OKEX Adds Monero

OKEX Exchange announced that they have launched Monero trading. OKEX is the 5th largest exchange in the world by volume.

Live Price Tracking

Monero was added to the crypto coaster live price tracking.

u/ms030 also created a XMR/USD live price tracker that fetches price from all USD exchanges, updates every 30 seconds, and is price is weighted by volume.

Around the Web

• Fluffypony tweeted that single-output Bulletproofs code is merged and will be live as part of the March hard fork.

• Chris DeRose from ‘Bitcoin Uncensored’ announced that they he is now accepting Monero tips for show expenses. Thanks to the donations, he was able to raise funds for the next three conferences on his schedule.
• An Unknown Amount, a Monero block explorer, was launched.
• VideoLAN is now accepting donations in Monero.

• XMR.TO testnet version is now publicly available.

• SerHack is looking for community feedback on selecting the title for the ebook/book of Monero.

• MoneroMike.com was launched, a blog discussing Monero.

• PinkDate, a company aiming to be a Tinder-like escorting platform is using Monero to raise startup capital.
• There is a Monero meetup on January 2nd in Los Angeles.
• u/Samnews9 posted a new article titled, “Trade Recommendation: Monero.”
• Monero is now back and available on Shapeshift after some downtime.

Guides

• Siraj Rival posted a video on YouTube describing in detail how Monero works.

• Kill The Beast Buy Bitcoin posted a video on YouTube titled, “Deadpool Explains Monero - Altcoin of the Week.”


• Coin Street posted a guide on how to buy Monero at Binance.

• MyCryptopedia posted an article explaining Monero ring signatures.
  

• Crypto Investors Guide posted a Monero analysis investor guide.

• Crypto Column posted a beginner’s guide on how to mine Monero.

• Bitcoin Beginner posted a privacy coin comparison, comparing XMR, ZEC, XZC, PVIX, NAV, and XVG.

• BitLaunch posted a guide on how to setup a DIY Bitcoin (or Monero) VPN.

• Coin Raja posted a guide on how to buy Monero with cash or a credit/debit card.

Monero Marketing

Monero Marketing posted a new Monero wallpaper to celebrate the new year.

Polymerbit.com released new limited Monero cold storage notes.

Monero Mining

u/RagnaroekX released Mithril, an open-source Monero miner.

Monero.us.to mining pool was updated.

The Merkle reported that a Monero mining bot is spreading through Facebook messenger.

WebARX reported on crypto-currency mining malware. Monero was discussed.

Shopping with Monero

Crypt-tees.com is now offering Monero t-shirts.

You can now buy semi-precious gems with Monero on crypto-gems.com.

Forum Funding System

1. Monero Bounty for Hackerone - 85.0% funded
2. Monero Tracking Challenge #2 - 52.05% funded

Top 5 r/Monero posts of the last few weeks

1. Monero - The very best crypto
2. Centralized "Banker coins" gaining momentum VS Decentralized "Anti-banker" coins like Monero
3. Monero, Bitcoin's BadAss cousin
4. We're back on Shapeshift. <3
5. An update on the Monero Hardware Wallet with pictures #34c3

Until next time…

Enjoy this webcomic by u/RoyalMayonnaise

Issues

1. Vol. 01, No. 19 12/26/17 1/1/18
2. Vol. 01, No. 17-18 12/5/17 12/25/17
3. Vol. 01, No. 16 11/28/17 12/4/17
4. Vol. 01, No. 15 11/21/17 11/27/17
5. Vol. 01, No. 14 11/14/17 11/20/17
6. Vol. 01, No. 13 11/7/17 11/13/17
7. Vol. 01, No. 12 10/31/17 11/6/17
8. Vol. 01, No. 11 10/24/17 10/30/17
9. Vol. 01, No. 10 10/17/17 10/23/17
10. Vol. 01, No. 09 10/10/17 10/16/17
11. Vol. 01, No. 08 10/3/17 10/9/17
12. Vol. 01, No. 07 9/26/17 10/2/17
13. Vol. 01, No. 06 9/19/17 9/25/17
14. Vol. 01, No. 05 9/12/17 9/18/17
15. Vol. 01, No. 04 9/5/17 9/11/17
16. Vol. 01, No. 03 8/29/17 9/4/17
17. Vol. 01, No. 02 8/22/17 8/28/17
18. Vol. 01, No. 01 8/15/17 8/21/17

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Monero Observer is a free weekly news publication released every Tuesday, created in an effort to keep the Monero community up to date on all the latest news and developments related to Monero. We aim to achieve this by aggregating all the relevant information into one convenient location in an easy-to-digest format. We sift through the noise so you don’t have to.

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