In the blink of an eye, privacy coin Grin spiked to over $12 during the weekend, increasing its market cap 600% in one week, from $2 million to $14 million as of Sunday.
Grin’s price increase may be attributed to its recent listings on exchanges including KuCoin and HotBit. It remains to be seen whether leading exchanges such as Binance will list the coin. On Monday, its price briefly dipped to $8.35 before recovering to $10.92, according to data compiled by CoinGecko.
Grin has been fondly described as Bitcoin 2.0 by its supporters and branded as a “pump and dump” coin by critics. An open-source project based on the MimbleWimble blockchain, the cryptocurrency was designed by an anonymous cryptographer to launch a better Bitcoin.
According to the 2016Â white paper,
“I call my creation Mimblewimble because it is used to prevent the blockchain from talking about all user’s information.”
In order to drive mainstream adoption, the anonymous cryptographer who takes a page from Harry Potter and goes by the name “Tom Elvis Jedusor” – Voldemort’s real name in the French edition of the novels – MimbleWimble is designed to be faster and more scalable than Bitcoin. It also puts a premium on privacy. Grin has no addresses and no amounts, with features masking the origin of newly created transactions.
Critics have raised concerns over the inflationary nature of the coin, as Grin is designed to encourage spending in the short term instead of generating returns as a long-term investment.
Research associate Myles Snider at Multicoin Capital says,
“Grin’s inflation rate doesn’t fall below 10% until after a full decade, and then it slowly continues decreasing from there.”
But Grin satisfies the cypherpunk ethos of decentralization, strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies. In true crypto-community fashion, Grin is developed openly by contributors who are distributed all over the world. Self-funded by its community, it didn’t have an initial coin offering, unlike many crypto projects.
According to its website,
“Grin is launched fairly — free of ICO, pre-mine or founder’s reward. We rely on donations to keep working on the project.”
Although interest in mining and trading Grin has increased since its public launch on January 15, 2019, the website issues a warning.
“It’s very young and experimental. Use at your own risk!”
Beam, another privacy coin on the MimbleWimble blockchain, followed similar but less dramatic price increases with a 7-day 120% increase in price to $1.82.
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