If there’s any one trend that has emerged in the cryptocurrency market over the past few years, it’s that privacy coins are here to stay. They’ve been around for a while now. Back when Bitcoin first launched, it was designed with pseudonymous addresses and transactions that couldn’t be traced back to their senders or receivers without intimate knowledge of the blockchain.
But over time, we’ve seen governments impose stricter KYC regulations on exchanges—and even some centralized exchanges are implementing these policies themselves—which makes tracking funds as easy as sending an email from your Gmail account.
So naturally, people began looking for alternatives: cryptocurrencies with greater anonymity features that would allow users to transact anonymously or semi-anonymously (depending on which coin you use).
Here are five privacy coins poised for success in 2022 and beyond:
Monero.
Monero is one of the best-known privacy coins on the market. It’s also completely decentralized, which makes it a great choice for investors who want to protect their assets from government intervention. It’s also a particularly good option for miners and developers looking to get involved in the blockchain community.
As with other cryptocurrencies, Monero’s value has increased over time as more people become interested in what it has to offer. The coin has been around since 2014 and has steadily risen in popularity ever since its inception—so much so that many people have started asking themselves: “How can I invest?”
PIVX.
PIVX is a fork of DASH and is built on the core of Bitcoin. The core tenets of the PIVX Manifesto are community governance and a decentralized project from the technology itself to how project proposals are voted on and implemented.
The PIVX team saw privacy as a critical component of a daily means of exchange and attempted to combine the “digital cash” ethos behind DASH—prioritizing fast, cheap payments with more advanced privacy options. They are hoping to become the dominant payment method for peer-to-peer and retail transactions.
The PIVX team believes that privacy should be a right, not an option. They are committed to creating the most secure, private and untraceable cryptocurrency on the market. PIVX has gone above and beyond many other projects in terms of technical development. The next step is adoption—getting merchants to accept PIVX as payment for goods and services.
Zcash.
Zcash is one of the most prominent privacy coins on the market today. It offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions, that are recorded in a public blockchain. Zcash payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction remain private.
Zcash uses zk-SNARKs cryptography to enable shielded transactions that hide both the payment information and the sender’s identity.
Dash.
Dash is a privacy-centric cryptocurrency designed to execute transactions quickly and have a swift governance structure in order to overcome the shortcomings of Bitcoin. Dash allows you to remain anonymous while you make instant transactions.
Dash splits its rewards into three categories: 45% of the reward goes to miners, and 45% is divided among master nodes (computers that provide additional services in the network and hold a significant investment in Dash tokens). The last 10% gets put toward its decentralized governance budget.
A decentralized autonomous organization is a governance model in which decisions are made on the blockchain via master nodes. Master nodes perform standard node functions like hosting a copy of the blockchain and relaying messages—but they also serve as shareholders, voting on proposals for improving Dash’s ecosystem.
Verge.
Verge Currency, previously known as DogeCoinDark, was launched in 2014. Verge Currency adheres to the same principles as bitcoin by transparently offering a ledger that allows anyone to view its transactions, but protects user identities and locations.
Verge Currency is a decentralized cryptocurrency that uses Tor to obscure its users’ IP addresses and stealth technology to conceal senders’ locations.
Privacy coins are the future.
In a world where privacy is increasingly under threat, these decentralized and anonymous currencies can be used for transactions and donations with complete anonymity.
This is because they use a system of cryptography to ensure that all of your personal information is secure.
Privacy coins have the potential to take us there. Here are some of the best in class right now: Monero (XMR) – A secure and private coin with a flexible supply of tokens that is perfect for use on public or private blockchains. Zcash (ZEC) – Uses zero-knowledge proofs to ensure that transactions remain anonymous while still being verifiable by miners; ideal for banks and other institutions looking to protect their customers’ information from third parties. Dash (DASH) – An open-source project that aims to become an everyday payment solution by making transactions fast, inexpensive, and secure through its use of master nodes as well as its built-in governance system.