Bitcoin Forum

It's been quite a long time since the first cryptocurrency with the "Mimblewimble" privacy technique was released. My first days of using GRIN were quite troublesome due to its added complexity. But it's a great coin to use for privacy-oriented transactions once you get the hang of it. Somehow, GRIN became a forgotten cryptocurrency as all of the attention shifted back to Monero. Was this a result of poor marketing/promotion efforts? Or a lack of user experience?

I'm wondering if this coin still has a future, especially when privacy on crypto has been frowned upon by mainstream governments. Do you think it can be good long-term investment like Monero? Or is it a complete bust? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. :)

Some of this can be lack of development, including lack of awareness across the cryptospace just as you already said..
Sincerely the name sound so strange to me I can't really recall if i have came across such project before or not, and maybe let just say people's attention has been shifted to the latest happening especially nowadays people are looking for a project that could give them some x value they wanted within the next few months. Nobody wants to invest in a project that is not giving them any profits moreover when investors already made their profits they ought to channel their efforts to other project that could possible give them triple of what they have invested IMO.

Never heard of it. But due to lack of news about it and its charts it seems like it's dead, or really close to that state.

I don't really know what is the faith of the token but I believe it has become a 91% fallen crypto that might not come back to it's ATH. Grin has recorded $14 ATH but has not been able to return to half of the ath till date instead it has been heading downward to $0.08 in coinmarket.cap with this price I don't think it can be back as tokens like Monero has taken it's position in the crypto space.

The last hit that got GRIN to this situation was the 51% attack by miners whose identities where unknown and their took over 57% of the GRIN network and I believe it lead to it's last fall in price, you can check coindesk (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/08/privacy-coin-grin-is-victim-of-51-attack/?_gl=1*x7f35m*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTg4MjY3NDM2Ny4xNzA0NDU2MTU0*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTcwNDQ1NjE1NC4xLjAuMTcwNDQ1NjE1NC4wLjAuMA..) to read more about the attack.

OP, how do you really know about this tokens? your have been strange this days lol  ;)

Well, with their lack of marketing strategy, how would this project gain attraction? The developers no longer expect progress and adoption and yeah, they'd rather expect people will ignore it. In fact, even though Monero has a name in the crypto space, still only a few individuals are using this. This simply means that people are not looking for a privacy project but instead, they are in crypto looking for something BIG fish that gives them HUGE rewards as well.

GRIN is nothing, that is harsh but that is what we saw. Meme coins are even better and more interesting than this project.

And if my memory serves me right, it was also at least promoted by our admin here as it was accepted for forum payments. However, it was stop in 2021 and up to now, it's no longer being accepted.

Perhaps with this news, it's no longer a thing, although if you look at the Github repo: https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin

There is still some movement months ago and it is still being developed, but there's need a lot left to be done here.

Governments will look at Monero first because if Bitcoin is a King of cryptocurrency market. Monero is a King of Privacy coins and if governments want to break down privacy coins, they will aim at Monero first. I don't feel fearful about risk for GRIN as it will not be first target of government.

Grincoin used to be accepted as a payment method for Copper membership.

grin is now accepted for forum payments (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5098450.0)

Grin is still a thing. They still have a small but active community and developers that are working. The overall crack on privacy based coins had an effect on the price and adoption of GRIN coin on exchanges and among people. Grin rose to a high price where there was hype about the privacy coins but has now settled in a much lower price range which actually is the natural price for it. It could still be a good coin to invest in as the hype on privacy focused coin may return.

At the same time, there is BEAM, but I still like GRIN more in terms of decentralization. But for speculation, imo private cryptocurrencies are still worth watching. It is conceivable that in the future there will be a lot of intervention from the centralized system on censorship and legal issues. There will be times when privacy trends are noticed again. But after all, it is an investment, and accepting possible risks, I think there is no problem at all.

As you said, it's been a long time since I followed it, but I've kept a small amount of GRIN for a long time, and I'm very happy to have witnessed its launch from the early days until now someone repeats it.

Biggest problem with Grin is its inflation, very high inflation. It is affected by general break down on privacy coins but it bas its own problems.

In first several years, Grin coin is very inflationary and it is very natural to see its price affected by this. It seems the coin supply curve will enter a flatter area next two years.

This is the first time I have heard of this coin and I spend a lot of time familiarizing myself at least with a lot of altcoins so me and a lot of other people not recognizing this might mean that it is truly dead or at least close to

A lot of altcoins usually after reaching their ATH gets a hard time reaching it let alone breaking it so it is not that impossible to say that a coin that is almost forgotten will probably not get a new ATH anymore

How can this privacy coin become a thing when it's only listed on a handful of centralized exchanges. It's also weird that the top volume in the last 24 hours is coming from a CEXs with the lowest ratings. The trading volume could be fake. Who knows if it will be one of the privacy coins that will be resurrected.

You were already around when the admin announced Grin will be accepted as for forum payment. Open the topic link posted by SquirrelJulietGarden

not sure if this is still a thing now. BEAM i guess rocketed lately which is quite a good indication, these two were always been compared.

if i remember correctly Theymos supports this coin and the forum accepts GRIN for membership. i bought some of this coin and stored it on Ironbelly, completely forgotten it for years. i have to dig some files to recover the keys.

There is no room for the privacy based coins in the regulated trading platforms so called centralized exchanges and most of the coins have been delisted already and even Monero is at the verge of getting delisted from Binance and it won't take too long from now on to get delisted from there.

I knew the GRIN and it became quite popular especially in the forum when theymos announced as a mode of payment to buy membership but later the fire went down and it never bounced back.

GRIN is not yet a thing.

At least not for the people in this forum that care more about high marketcap and breaking ATHs than about fundamentals like simplicity and fair distribution. But those fundamentals will make GRIN outlive most other altcoins, so who knows... GRIN could be considered a thing here in a decade or two.

The more exchanges de-list the coin, the lower mainstream exposure it will have. I guess that's the case with GRIN and other privacy coins. Monero may be the most popular privacy coin on the market, but it's also suffering from reduced liquidity/mainstream adoption because of CEXs' decisions. We can blame mainstream governments for this. Slowly but surely, GRIN's popularity will fade away until it becomes history. A pity, because this coin had an innovative approach to privacy. It would've made a great XMR competitor in the long run. BEAM is also in the same boat.

With privacy coins being a rarity these days, it's likely Monero will be the only one that will survive in the future. I'm yet to see whenever GRIN can be traded for another coin at a DEX or P2P exchange. It's virtually a "ghost". At least, the code is open source. Maybe someone else will "resurrect" it? :(

But Grin is not a privacy coin. It's not focussed on privacy. It's focussed on simplicity [1].
In fact it's the only coin with that focus, so it's in a class of its own.

Just like its emission is in a class of its own, with 1 Grin per second forever.
Every other coin, without exception, confers a big advantage to early miners (or worse, to the coin creators) at the cost of later generations. Such coins will be frowned upon by those later generations.
Grin is the only coin that's fair to later generations. So again in a class of its own.

Grin has always been in the top 25 of PoW coins [2], so it's not in need of resurrection.

Grin is also quite young emission-wise; it has only emitted 5% of its soft total supply [3].
In 20 years it will be where Bitcoin was after just 2 years; at 25% of emission.
So it's still early days for Grin...
 
[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5309951.msg60800901

[2] https://www.f2pool.com/coins

[3] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153

I completely forgot about that coin.  I remember when they came out and mimblewimble was all the latest rage.  There was another coin that was it's competitor I forget it now but the 2 of them ran in price so quick.  People said it was gonna change the world and here we are it's just another crap coin lime the rest of them. 

A thing you call it? GRIN is an important altcoin in the market even the existence of the coin won't reach decades and in coming years. GRIN is one of these numerous altcoins in the market, and there's one thing I want to put out straight, all altcoins have holders and these investors are hoping that one day, the altcoins they're holding will shoot the moon with heavy long candles in the chart. I know we don't sit in the position to know everything in the system but there are certain sectors of crypto that ought to be understood because it's ultimate and important.

PRivacy coin would die if the government keep pushing and grin is PoW and using lot of power there will be a people who don't like it because the environmental and bla bla bla.

Privacy coin hate by the government and CeX should follow the rule. But if the community and the developer still active this coin not gonna die

after I check CMC the coin still there with couple of Cex listing

Grin had a lot of promise early on because of its privacy and scalability. Launching it before there was a proper GUI wallet was a mistake. Not having any addresses was confusing and one of the ways in which it could be transferred was by sending it to an IP address. Deanonymizing users via their IP address is completely contrary to what you would expect from a privacy coin. There was a lot of funding behind it. From the start, the supply became centralized because large investors owned most of the hashpower. This excluded average users from mining and made the fair launch aspect meaningless.

After all these early issues I stopped paying attention to it. There are other blockchains working on privacy, either directly onchain or through external protocols, so Grin has lost its early mover advantage and it'll be difficult for it to recover.

Grin uses very little power; not even 0.02% of the power that Bitcoin does.
You could power Grin from just one windmill.

I still remember it with the mimblewimble. With all of the transactions that are happening in the privacy protocol projects, it's just sad that we get to see that the government is too strict with these types. During the launching of it, a lot have been optimistic on Grin and I think that there's also another project that have became popular together with it but I barely remember what that project is.

That project is a failure and the developer/s can't provide their promises. Many of these privacy projects are good through their words but the application seems too far from what we want to expect and what happens to Grin would simply mean that privacy coins gaining less attraction to the investors. These days, investors are not looking for privacy coins anymore and it was not their big concern, they are looking for projects that would give them profit. That is why privacy coins are losing their trend and dumping. It was uncertain to see them recovering, less chances as per see.

I agree with this. Grin is one of those rare projects that takes time to get off the ground. It goes "all-in" on simplicity and fairness, even more so than Bitcoin, which we all love and support. Perhaps the most unique feature of them all is the monetary policy, which not only ensures a fair distribution over decades, it also mimics time. From what I can tell, it's the closest to a "time is money" experiment we've been able to create, and it's the supply following time that creates a slow start. Unfortunately, there's no way around it (unless you have a time machine), but this also means very few projects will try such experiments. It's not a "privacy coin", but rather a monetary experiment vastly different from Bitcoin's that might be worth bringing to life. The community is indeed small today, but also quite different from what you'll see in other projects. I can't recall when I've seen people talking about getting rich with Grin and that's a good thing. Grin will be celebrating its 5th birthday soon, so if anyone wants to show some love, come blow a candle on the forums on January 15th.

As a general suggestion for those who enjoy commenting, it's often wise to share our thoughts only on topics we are knowledgeable about. There is already an abundance of misinformation circulating, so let's try to not add to the noise with additional uninformed opinions.

Many of us in the forum does, because AFAIK it was also being highlighted here as one of the payment methods when availing a copper membership but IDK what really happened on why it was discontinued. I won't say it's because governments are strict with it since we support decentralization here.

But, I think it's because it didn't get enough impression for the many so its volume got lesser, which makes it not suitable anymore as a payment method. There are always new projects that came out. And some can copy the others when they think that project is starting to get popular. I'm not talking about the meme coins here. No wonder why you can't remember that other project anymore.

I'm likewise just hearing about the Grincoin, for the first time in this thread, guess it had it's glory days before I ventured into cryptocurrency business. I know that to be relevant in the crypto industry, a project has to be up and doing, probably be coming up with new innovations to capture new investor interests and retain the ones that they have. Members are likening it to Monero, I guess that they share the same features, but Monero, is clearly far ahead of Grincoin, I hope that it's developers will come up with something new because we need more top coins to make choices from in the crypto market.

If it's not a privacy coin, how come GRIN is using the "Mimblewimble" privacy technique? And I wouldn't say the project is focused on simplicity, especially when it has a steep learning curve. I've had trouble using the cryptocurrency after migrating from Bitcoin. After reading tutorials online, I was able to get ahold of it. For being a "young coin", GRIN is lacking behind others in terms of popularity and mainstream demand. With a low number of CEXs trading it, what more would you expect? The project had potential to become a "force to reckon with". But unfortunately, bad propaganda surrounding privacy coins have damaged GRIN's reputation.

Most people nowadays want centralized shitcoins with no "substance" behind them. You can see why coins like SOL, XRP, and even "meme" coins like DOGE and SHIBA are among the top ranks in market cap. GRIN was good while it lasted. At least, the code is open source. What's stopping someone from creating an improved version of it in the future? :)

One big factor I think was the government shutting down privacy coins and having them delisted on the exchanges. That might be one of the reasons why this project that once became popular in the forum became almost forgotten and no one remembers it. If it's not with the government tracking down projects like this, we've got a lot of privacy coins in the community wherein many would like to use.

I believe that the lack of development is the main factor for the decline of this currency, including advertising, despite the advantages it has. After the forum administrators decided to add the Grin payment feature to purchase Cooper membership, I was surprised after years that the number of those who registered using that feature was very small.

The success of Grin depends on two factors:
- Launching new features: If Grin team can add new features that attract users, it may be able to reverse the current trend.
- Increased interest in privacy: If interest in privacy increases in the world of cryptocurrencies, this could also be beneficial for Grin.

I think GRIN remains functional therefore still a nice alternative. But it definitely is not as relevant as before. I remember when theymos even accepted GRIN for payments in the forum. It was not expected, both theymos' decision and the choice of altcoin. But that the main administrator chose it for being a real crypto project or legit innovation as compared to the thousands of others that are merely copies of each other and mostly scams, it speaks volume about GRIN.

GRIN is definitely not a complete bust but I think it's not really a good long-term investment unless its promotion is improved and its usage widened.

The forum admin took the decision to ban mixers out of fear from government prosecution. If regulators go against privacy coins, you can bet GRIN will be removed from the forum ASAP. The cryptocurrency's days are numbered. Just like BEAM, Monero, and the likes. I guess that why GRIN is very unpopular these days (aside from a poor marketing/promotion strategy). There hasn't been any innovation on the project so far (as far as I know).

With a limited number of exchanges and low demand, it's likely GRIN will fade away into oblivion. The source code and the core blockchain network will still be with us, though. What's stopping someone from reviving it in the future? As long as decentralization is put first, nothing else matters. ;D

You must have meant mixers, not miners. The forum does not have anything against miners. ;D

We actually don't have to wait for regulators to go against privacy coins for the forum to stop accepting GRIN. The admin has already done it a few years s ago. Unfortunately, it's mainly GRIN's unpopularity that's the reason. The payment code for GRIN needed fixing but since it isn't really a popular payment option by users here, the admin didn't bother putting it back.

GRIN is probably better than thousand others in the crypto ecosystem, so there might come a time when it gains more popularity if somebody takes over the project and gets busy with development and adoption.

I'm afraid that's not the philosophy behind Grin. Features add complexity and there's a sea of projects whose focus is nothing but continuous adding of something so that people can hype themselves up around the next "revolutionary" thing. Grin will likely remain what it is today, just like Bitcoin. And while it does have a much better privacy than Bitcoin due to confidential transactions, it's not about maximizing privacy coin at all cost. Mimblewimble is good at achieving a lot with very little complexity. It would be a shame to throw away the simplicity and elegance of this design just to inject a short term dopamine rush into speculators.

It's Grin's 5th birthday.  ;D

It's obvious that Grin has unique features and that it was considered revolutionary when it was launched in 2019. But it is clear today that it is going through considerable challenges that are difficult for it to deal with.

In my opinion, the most prominent of these challenges are:
-The Grin development team is relatively small compared to other cryptocurrency development teams. This may lead to slower development and the emergence of a lot of unexpected errors.
- There are still a few real applications that use Grin. This is because the coin is relatively new, and its community is still small.
- Many other cryptocurrencies that offer similar features to Grin. This may make it difficult to distinguish Grin from these coins.
- Lack of awareness of the currency and this is due to lack of marketing.

If Grin can overcome these challenges, it could have a promising future. However, making this happen requires a significant effort from the coin's team and community.

Heard about this for the first time from this post. Found it after looking into coinmarketcap.  it indeed looks very good. I think it is very underrated . as you said maybe it is lack of marketing because I think it could've a bigger community if it was properly marketed.


Right now nothing is certain about Privacy Coins. the big coins are in trouble getting delisted by big exchanges. so can't say how would this one do in such environment.. maybe if it was famous like monero and other privacy coins it would've been hit by govt too.
I would not long this coin for now.

With the lack of information on the reason for its discontinuation and development, it all leads us to make speculations. But as we can see, privacy coins have not gotten much attention in the community, they are not after privacy coins but for profit which is why they choose projects that are known and highly volatile coins. Until these days, only Monero has gained sustainability and market demand while the other privacy coins have gone too fast after their launching. Not really a good thing to see but can't stop people from being practical.

Just imagine that meme coins gain so much hype and market attention despite the fact that they don't have a use case.

Grin easily stands out from the tens of thousands of other blockchains in being

1) the ONLY one with a fair emission: every generation gets the same share of supply

All else being equal, later generations would prefer to adopt a blockchain that hasn't already
handed out nearly all supply to earlier generations.

2) the ONLY one focussing on simplicity and elegance in design.

See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5309951.msg60800901

I think its done and dusted. There can be more then one reason for that, marketing the most important one. But there are so many currencies coming up each day, that alot of coins, even the quality one are bound to go that path and only the ones marking all the check boxes survive. And luck is also one of those check boxes.

I'm confused why we're trying to guess what happened. Grin had open communication channels way before it launched so everything's publicly available. Much better than just sharing our unsubstantiated opinions would be to take the time to read these channels or ask someone that knows.

If we look at how successful Grin was in the past and also his current condition, it's quite sad. Actually, the project is still ongoing and I see that their community is still active. However, to return to the conditions at that time, especially to reach the ATH again, it really requires a very wild effort and it may not even be easy to happen. Because the price difference is very drastic. There have been many projects that have had a fate like this and the chances of it coming back are very small even if the project continues to run. In this case, to continue to survive and remain in the market and have a market cap that is still ongoing is already good enough development. However, to return to the way it was before and reach ATH again, this will be very difficult.

Yes, that's what I've meant. With mixers being heavily-scrutinized by mainstream governments, we should expect things to get worse in the long run. Privacy coins like GRIN and Monero are not immune from government prosecution. They can face de-listing from other CEXs as pressure mounts over time. A pity, because I liked GRIN a lot. It could've been a good XMR contender in the long run.

With development progress stalled (AFAIK), it should only be a matter of time before GRIN becomes a relic of the past. Same goes for BEAM. Monero seems to be the most actively-developed privacy coin to date, despite the aformentioned shortcomings. If it's de-listed from every CEX, there will be no Fiat on/off ramps except through P2P exchanges (or face-to-face). It'll be a dark future ahead for GRIN and similar coins. At least, it was "fun" while it lasted. :(

Grin is surely still a thing.

But unfortunately, gamblers estimating projects in terms of hype and money making (or loosing) not in terms of tech innovations, though it's hard to understand for non techy people which project is truly innovative among the ocean of shitcoins and scam coins.

Grin is the only altcoin which adds something interesting to Bitcoin and complements it, without sacrificing on security or decentralization.

Grin adds enhanced privacy and more scalable blockchain comparing to Bitcoin, with the tradeoffs of interactive transactions and non auditable coin supply (though the cryptography verifies no extra coins minted).

Grin itself is innovative and doesn't need to hype around adding new "features" just to satisfy gambling behavior of the masses.

The development is still ongoing, AFAIK, the most interesting feature is mwixnet, which is going to break linkability in transactions graph and put Grin into the fully privacy coins league, competing with Monero.

But the most exciting feature of Grin coin is ONE GRIN PER SECOND FOREVER. The most fair launch, without early users advantage, same distribution rate for all no matter when you joined the network. Even Bitcoin can't compete with that. The more time past, the more Grin become valuable due to fair distribution.

I guess development for the project is still happening behind the scenes. I like GRIN because it's not an overhyped project like Ethereum and Solana. Perhaps, that's the reason why market prices haven't been rising that much lately. If the network stays alive, there would be nothing to worry about. Decentralization is all that matters for GRIN to be able to stand the test of time.

I hope GRIN stays a PoW coin forever. After all, PoW is becoming a rarity these days. We should expect further de-listings for GRIN because of its privacy features. Maybe it will end up being traded at DEXs and P2P exchanges in the long run? No one can predict the future, so lets hope for the best. ;D

Not only will Grin stay PoW forever (the memory hard and instantly verifiable cuckatoo32+),
but it will also stay, since the time of launch, the ultimately fair

1 Grin per second forever

At the beginning of my crypto journey, I remember Grin coin gaining attention, being considered the new Bitcoin with unknown developers, and so on. However, currently, there is no news about the Mimblewimble technology or the project overall. It seems the project has lost relevance, possibly due to poor marketing or user experience.

Yes. It was launched in 2019. I don't think that will happen and it won't be an obstacle for users if they want to buy it. I see that the price has great potential and is starting to rise and the movement is also starting to look good.

You must not have been reading the Grin Forum at https://forum.grin.mw/

I remember theymos ever so slightly shilling it on this very forum. I actually started buying it in the hope that it was the next big thing. Its all time high was 5 years ago, it crashed hard & has never recovered. It’s done nothing for years, it’s a dead project sadly. It was worth throwing a few hundred bucks in early on though, incase it exploded. It’s a dead project though now.

Grin is one of my favourite low-cap coins :) I think it still ranks highly among those who priorize real technological advancements over short term hype and technobabble. And I generally agree with @tromp's and @oryhp's posts. The emission schedule is only a disadvantage if you look for short term profit. It also doesn't mean that the coin will have "eternal inflation", because inflation rate will go down over time, only much slower than in the case of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero etc. but rather similar to Doge, which is itself an example that even a "highly inflationary" coin can rank quite high.

However, it shouldn't be forgotten that there was an 51% attack (https://cointelegraph.com/news/grin-network-hit-with-51-attack-while-grin-token-remains-resilient) attempt on the blockchain in 2020. I don't remember if the attack was successful, i.e. if coins were stolen (like in the BSV attacks), but the fact a reorganization by a miner group took place was likely one of the reasons why it has lost a lot of ground as people for sure feared the blockchain was "unsafe".

The current price evolution however looks quite good. Grin has recovered from a bear market in early 2023 and has about doubled in price in the last 3 months:

https://talkimg.com/images/2024/01/28/krlc2.png

(orange is the price in BTC, and light blue the price in USD)

I don't think grin will return to what it used to be, when other coins have increased, grin has not increased at all.
even though the market is in good condition.
I think other new privacy coins will be used if indeed coins like that will boom again.

Mimblewimble is a cool way to make transactions private and anonymous on the blockchain.
GRIN is a coin that uses Mimblewimble, but it has some problems like:
It’s hard to use for normal people because the wallets and interfaces are not user-friendly.
It has a lot of coins in circulation and they keep increasing, which makes some people worry about its value and scarcity.
It has some security and scalability issues that need to be fixed.
Monero is another coin that focuses on privacy, but it uses a different approach than Mimblewimble. It has some advantages like:
It’s more popular and widely used than GRIN, which gives it more network effect and liquidity.
It has a more stable and predictable supply and inflation rate, which makes it more attractive as a store of value.
It has more features and innovations that enhance its privacy and security, such as Ring Signatures, Stealth Addresses, Bulletproofs, and RandomX.
Both GRIN and Monero have their pros and cons, and they are not directly comparable. It depends on your personal preference and risk appetite which one you want to invest in.

I personally had no prior knowledge of Grin Coins. But I hope I don't miss the mark when I find out. So allow me to ask whether the GRIN in question is this one GRIN (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/grin/)

If true, then it seems that this coin has begun to be forgotten. Even their ranking in cmc has reached rank 1000. But fortunately not everyone has forgotten about it because in terms of trading volume they are still ranked 734. After I read how this coin works. I think someday this coin will get some attention again. As long as their team is still active enough in developing and interacting with their community again

But unfortunately I see they are not very active. In fact I saw their Twitter made a post last time in 2022 and it wasn't good at all.


Sourch: https://twitter.com/grin_privacy

Grin has 903 times fewer coins in circulation that Doge while increasing 167 times slower, which makes Grin orders of magnitude scarcer than Doge.

Grin is the most scalable coin in existence, leaving a footprint of only about 100 bytes
 for a historical transaction, while Bitcoin leaves about 400 bytes and Monero/Zcash leave over 2000 bytes.

This is laughable in the extreme. Grin is one coin per second forever, the most stable and predictable supply rate possible. Monero's supply curve is so complicated that you need to compute it block by block to figure out the supply at some height. This is further complicated by a change in block interval at some time in history. Only since its recent tail emission did it get less complicated and almost as simple as Grin.

Of these, Grin only lacks Ring Signatures, which does make Monero much harder to trace, but also makes its chain much more bloated (20x larger footprint per historical tx).

A super complicated PoW that's expensive to verify, compared to Grin's simple Cuckatoo32+ that can be trivially verified. Yet it requires >= 1GB to mine.

Neither is meant for investing in.
Some articles with accurate comparisons between Grin and Monero:

https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/grincoin/comments/mu88ow/comment/gv6dddu/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

There's not much interest in privacy-preserving technologies thsse days. Most people are only focused on centralized "shitcoins" (Solana, XRP), NFTs, and "meme" coins. Why would they care about privacy coins that are often "demonized" by mainstream governments? The least people want is get into trouble.

Besides, most people claim they "have nothing to hide". It's why privacy coins like GRIN and Monero are widely unpopular these days. Litecoin even went as far as adopting GRIN's "Mimblewimble" privacy technique to no avail. The vast majority of LTC users don't use such feature. We should expect GRIN to further decline in value until it becomes history. At least we know the GRIN blockchain won't be going anywhere soon. As long as miners and nodes support the network, nothing else matters. :D

I also heard a little about this coin, but the marketing saying "next bitcoin" is ridiculous because everyone knows there is no coin that will compete with bitcoin. I don't know how this coin is doing now, maybe the PI coin is today's GRIN coin  :D

I think you're wrong here. While I don't have infomation about Grin, I regularly use an exchange service (exch.cx) which publishes the reserves of all coins they listed in real time, and often their Monero reserves were depleted in the last months. The company even increased fees for Bitcoin -> Monero transfers, but not the other way around and not for other coins. This is, in my opinion, an indicator that privacy coins (in this case Monero) do have a lot of demand.

The problem in my opinion is more that privacy coins have been removed by some high-profile exchanges. This means that a big part of the "average Joe" cryptocurrency users, above all those that use cryptos for speculation, can't buy them anymore (remember that in most exchanges you have to register and do KYC/AML stuff, so many people probably won't register on another exchange only because there's one coin missing). In other words the barrier to invest in privacy coins is getting higher and higher. This also may mean that less crypto influencers will talk about privacy coins, reducing "speculative" demand further.

Taking into account this fact I think that Grin's price is evolving quite positively (see the charts above).

If the coin has been in the ecosystem from ages of days and till now the coin (GRIN) is still have this value of $0.08918 from Coingecko then the coin is still doing well though it is not popular like Monero coin which is also rating as $167.38. Monero is also doing well in the cryptocurrency ecosystem space. And from the way I see GRIN, it will be good for a long term investment because the price as it is, it is not too bad to invest. Not all the coins can survive to this time and for it to stay in the ecosystem in a low key with much people knowing it then once the marketing strategy is high and people know it more then it will do well.

Any altcoin that stays in the ecosystem for five years plus then there is hope to survive in the space. And really poor marketing strategy also affects the growth of a project in the space because if the project is not constantly advertised for people to see and use then it would be a forgotten project for all probably because it is not active or floating for people to see. And really the privacy of cryptocurrency has been tempered by governments so the absolute PRIVACY of cryptocurrency is doubted now.

Every privacy coin will be crushed by governments around the world because governments don't like privacy. They like control. It is a personal opinion about things. Grin is a privacy coin and governments will do everything to stop blockchains like this. I am not very optimistic about Grin even though I like the project a lot and they have received significant BTC donations before. I hope that I am wrong and that privacy is going to be built in as a must-have feature in crypto.

One thing is certain and that is demand for privacy coins is low compared to the rest of the pack. Without support from big exchanges, privacy coins will have little-to-no mainstream exposure. Like you said, the "average Joe" won't be able to speculate on privacy coins because of this. Perhaps, it's a good sign for privacy-oriented crypto projects to focus on development/innovation instead of hype.

Despite the fact that privacy coins are scarce, most of them are still being actively maintained and developed by the community. It's likely GRIN will survive alongside Monero for generations. As long as it stays decentralized, nothing else matters. Who knows what surprises we'll find in the long run? ;D

I started mining grin on a gpu about a year ago, and now I have five g1 minis running. The thing I love most about grin is the supply curve and the distribution in general. There is no more fair launch in cryptocurrency, not even bitcoin, and it's not even close. Besides that it is more lightweight than bitcoin and more private.

Indeed; Grin ensured the fairest launch ever by

1) having a widely announced launch

2) having optimized GPU miners available for its cuckaroo29 PoW long in advance

3) inscribing the genesis block with a recent Bitcoin block hash (Bitcoin block 558,653)

4) having an astronomically high starting difficulty (22x larger for block 1 than for block 61)

5) having the same block subsidy at launch as at any later time.

The first mined block took well over an hour, and the average block time in the first day well over its 1 minute target, with the mining rewards on that first day amounting to less than 0.0024% of the soft total supply.

Clearly nobody had any advantage at launch. Neither the creators, nor the miners.

After igno left Grin, core team showed no progress.
No working wallet without problem or exchanges.
Grin delisted from many exchanges and pools, many developer left.
GRIN missed 3 bullrun. It is #1344 th coin.
Many shit token make new ATH, many times.

Also fake grin more valuable than grin now.  ;D
İt is shame.  ???

What fair distribution we are talking about?
Only pro guys like you can transfer Grin with CLI commands.
Core team blocked adoption infront of everybody eyes.
You dont review other contributers work, you dont fix bugs or anyone interfere.
How many Bitcoin spent for GUI wallet since 2022 ?

Grin GUI alpha is out now. The BSC scam token only brought attention to legit $GRIN, and showed what a fucking scam MEXC just like their big brother Binance scamming with Monero. Grin keeps building and growing, none of this scam token ponzi bullshit matters.

GRIN GUI is being developed since 2022.

Still not come closer to anything.
Terrible UX, unusable wallet again.
Failure.

OK brand new account coming out of the woodwork to make a bunch of posts trash talking one of the few legitimate projects in the space. You are clearly either a salty bagholder just mad at life or someone trying to talk trash and buy in lower. Go do something productive with your life boi  ;D

 He makes a point. There is no stable working wallet since 2019 and rest development is look like mainteanace or half done projects.

  Do not try to sugarcoat a project who stalled since Igno times- during his time  developers has done most of the development of GRIN, after him everything gone south.

 GUI is again eyewash as it before. I am sure it wont be finished like atomic swaps or mwixnet or hardware wallet or other things.

  After igno, no serious development.Period.

  Even grin++ developer bailed, the guy has warned core team guys many times about GRIN development issues.

Tromp just posted in this thread. Grin++ seems active within last few months, telegram channel is active 🤷‍♀️ Go chase scams if you wanna chase scams. Seems like a waste of time to kick dirt on one of the few legitimate projects in the space besides maybe bitcoin, monero, maybe litecoin and doge (wownero ofc  :D ) - what else?

Only a troll would state such utter falsehood with such certainty...

There have been many major changes since Igno left in Aug 2019,
including two new PoW, a new DAA, a new fee model, hardware wallet support, a new
syncing mechanism, and a mw mixnet prototype.

Yeah, continue to write everyone off as greedy shitcoiners just looking for a quick pump or troll.
Same old tactics, you drove away many people from Grin with this ''troll''

What prototype you are talking about?
Open ended unfinished prototypes again since 2020? 

https://forum.grin.mw/t/the-official-grin-gui-wallet/7209 (https://forum.grin.mw/t/the-official-grin-gui-wallet/7209)

Core team pay  itself with no funding  request, without no check balance since  igno left. 
Where are the funding request of core team?
Millions of dollar spent since 2019. Btc Funds are outlfowing  constantly.
Core team arrogancy and poor leadership ruined GRIN

Since 2019 igno left, core team slowly drain the funds and stand in the way of those who want to actively improve grin. You drove away them politically.

Grin transactions are still buggy and your CLI even, Grin is unusable for average joe.
You, core team even  dont know how exchange GRIN transactions work.
Show me your last transactions of GRIN.

Who is the troll ?

What have you done besides come here and kvetch? That is the definition of a troll. You. You are the troll. Not really that complicated lol.

 GRIN yearly mining reward is close to 2 million $, yet transparent fund shows more than 2 million spent to development, GUI started 2020 ?

https://grin.mw/fund

1. Two new algo phase out already decided in 2019
2. Synch mechanism RFC from 2020
3. Hardware wallet is done by MWC fork developer. At which part  GRIN devs engaged, contributed it? Even reviewed? I guess NO.

 Where is the progress reports of core guy, who drains funds since 2019 ?
 
 So it was supposed to be equal rules for everyone, clearly abused the power that IGNO handed over to you.

 You cant write off everyone troll, drove away most of contributers,  while leaving newbies to  buggy and unusable CLI wallet.

 Personally i respect your enthusiasm and loyalty to GRIN but  nobody is convinced that virtue signaling anymore.

 Where is the deliverables and request funding of yeastplume who works part time?

 example as antioch. Rules are same for everyone.

 https://forum.grin.mw/t/request-for-funding-antioch-apr-jun-2020/7183

Tbh I don't know the whole history and really only got interested in GRIN a year ago or so. If your coin needs a treasury it's a fucking scam anyway, so if treasury is gone that's good imo. Let the people who only want money take the money and run, there seems to be plenty of interested folks mining, shilling, developing, etc.

Depending what you mean by thing? Is it interesting to majority or trendy? No. But İgno (founder) suddenly leaving grin was probably end of grin, as even with new developers, that kind of move make people lose trust and interest. Also i am not sure if there was any need for competition as we had monero already. Especially when, like you said that it had "added complexity".

Here's also reddit thread from 2 years ago about it being dead:
https://www.reddit.com/r/grincoin/comments/rhhhlk/so_is_grin_dead_or_what/

Actually i doubt that there's any privacy centered coin that is doing well in this bull market. Regulations from FATF made sure that they won't be in any big exchanges, and even cashing them out in any way gets more difficult as time goes on and these new regulations can be monitored more efficiently.

One of Grin's selling points is that the underlying machinery is even simpler than Bitcoin, so I don't know that added complexity at the user interface level currently is meaningful if it is really simpler at its core. And it is certainly much much simpler machinery than Monero.

Another issue that a critic might raise about Monero (or Bitcoin) is the rapidity of its emission schedule and unfairly rewarding insiders (and this is doubly true about Monero because of its even faster emission than BTC and the issue of crippleminer, claymore, etc.).

I think there's plenty of space for something that is simpler and lighter weight than BTC, maybe almost as private as XMR, and offering a much more fair emission schedule to late comers than any other project in the whole cryptoverse.

It has unique tech features but unfortunately it just couldn’t catch up
with all the hype.
It also had lots of competition back then hence why after
a few years, its value decreased. It never improved and was blocked by a lot
of other newer and better coins.

Seeing as not a lot of people are still interested, I think it’s not gonna be able
to recover anymore or anytime soon.

Ok you fucking Eloncoin chatgpt spambot, thanks for your informed and enlightening opinion

I am planning to use Grin because I like the concept, and have downloaded Grin++. At a first glance it looks quite good (it's even one of the more visually attractive altcoin wallets I saw, I like the yellow-black combination) and easy to use, so I don't understand that much the problem some of you folks have with the GUI. Yes, I know it's not "official". And it seems to be at least partly based on Electron. But AFAIK on Ethereum the GUI wallets are also provided by third parties.

I don't know why Grin is so low valued. Perhaps it has to do with the general problem of decentralized altcoins to have less funds for marketing, in particular for social media shilling. Perhaps it's due to the 51% attack it suffered some years ago, or even the perception of people that governments are taking action against privacy coins (Monero's performance was also underwhelming this year). But it can be seen currently as an opportunity to onboard new people - and what is valued very low can provide good profits even if it doesn't reach the top coins.

And no, I don't think Grin "isn't necessary" because Monero exists. The privacy technology is very different, with unique advantages and disadvantages. If Monero for example fails because of some kind of attack, perhaps the Grin algorithm has characteristics which make it less vulnerable.

For example, in the last days Monero network saw a lot of activity which may be spam transactions. It is possible that these came from chain analysis companies trying to lower the privacy level of the Monero users, because in the "ring signature" model the more "known" participants of a ring-signed transaction there are, the less private are the remaining ones. I still don't think Monero is unsafe or not private enough due to this reason, because afaik if you're cautious you can still have a much higher level of privacy than with Bitcoin even if 50% of the txes were chain analysis spam permanently (and also this spam would be expensive if sustained for a long time). But afaik this kind of attack isn't possible with Grin in this way (correct me if I'm wrong, I have only a rudimentary understanding of MimbleWimble), so it has an advantage.

Crypto land is always in need of privacy coins. Each has their unique approach for obfuscating transactions. Monero may be the most popular privacy coin, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. Grin is different from Monero and has its own set of advantages/disadvantages. It's very unfortunate to see it being abandoned by the original developer. It had potential to become a great XMR alternative with its "Mimblewimble" privacy technique. Not sure if there will be a community takeover for Grin. But at least, it does the job it's supposed to.

Maybe people will pay attention to it after governments increase their surveillance methods? With CBDCs on the brink of launch, privacy coins could become an option for those used to anonymous transactions with paper money. The future can't be predicted, so lets hope for the best. :)

 
 GRIN MimbleWimble March developments and News #47  (https://grinpost.substack.com/p/grin-mimblewimble-march-developments)

• GUI wallet import functionality.  
• MimbleWimble-python slatepacks.
• Ledger Hardware wallet bounty.
• Grinwish List.

Maybe, in the meanwhile new AML law (https://dailycoin.com/new-eu-aml-laws-ban-all-anonymous-crypto-payments/) in EU is going to ban all anonymous crypto payments. Only privacy preserving coin that i know that will be safe is Dusk, as their tech is going to be complying with eu AML laws, and their citadel tech can be used to identify the wallets, meaning that auditing is transactions is possible. But everything stays confidential to outsiders because kyc is build into zk tech.

Privacy coins being illegal means that there won't be any insitutional investors left and i don't see how privacy coins could have much liquidity value when it's gets harder and harder to convert to fiat money. So maybe it will stay hidden as money between people who won't mind possible criminal record. Who knows.

Oh no the govt is going to ban Monero and Grin  ::) I guess we better pack it up boys, o48o says we need to respect the EUSSR and their draconian bullshit, let's all pile into the ICO scam compliance bro "privacy" shitcoin that he's shilling.

Grin has not died. The price has been stabilized at a lower side and it has a sizeable community of volunteers and privacy focused users.
It's still one of the popular mineable coin. Miners are another community that are keeping the coin alive. A coin is dead when there's no transaction volume. Grin is still listed and traded on some centralized exchange like Gate.io. The problem with privacy focused coins are being unlisted from every popular exchange. There surely would be some unknown centralized exchange listing them but coinmarketcap won't track it and people would forget it.

At first, I was very excited to this project but after that, I stopped because it seems the "privacy coin narrative" seems becoming non sense in the world of cryptocurrency because the essence of cryptocurrency being anonymous or having privacy is already there, so these kinds of project seems become more redundant.

If you think privacy is "already there" with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or almost every other coin...then you deserve to go to jail for buying drugs on the dnm or whatever 😸

If a privacy coin complies with KYC/AML, then it's NOT a true privacy coin at all. Crypto projects should remain neutral to help fulfill Satoshi's original vision. I guess Monero and GRIN are (and will always be) the best privacy coins in the world. Who cares if market prices go down in the long run? Bitcoin was never meant to please the regulators. It was created as an antithesis to the existing Fiat system backed by corrupt banks and governments. A coin that's truly-decentralized and private is what we need to help achieve freedom and self-sovereignity.

I sure hope GRIN Gets the attention it deserves in the development community, so it can become a "force to reckon with". With constant network improvements, GRIN will be able to last a lifetime. That's assuming it doesn't move away from decentralization over time. The future can't be predicted, so lets hope for the best. :)

Did we surprise ?
Another developer left Grin project.

Maybe he is trolling too ?

Dusk had a private sale, not an ICO, but go ahead, you have right to ignore and dismiss it as a scam even if their lead cryptographer is Dmitry Khovratovich. I am assuming you know the name if you are into privacy coin tech. Or cryptocurrencies in general.

And maybe you should revisit and read more about those new laws to understand what i meant. Because it sounds like you are dismissing this as fud. As it's really not up to your opinion if insitutional investors put money into them or any centralized exchanges deals with them. And you are totally free to go back to p2p ages, but maybe expect that marketcap going back with it. No one can prevent or would care about that pocket money trading. But trying to cash large amounts of it to fiat money, it will become increasinly problematic in time. And FATF travel rule isn't only EU thing you know.

Well there's always a choice. If we want btc or coins with anonymous transactions to go up in value, we need high liquidity and that happens by complying with regulations. If we want total freedom, or even anonymity we don't expect financial insitutions or centralized exchanges to deal with them.

And i totally get, how what i am saying is against whole early cryptopunk money ethos, but we have came a long way from the start, and laws are catching up with the people who are stealing cryptos. So cashing large amounts out in fiat money will become harder and will need good old money laundering in fiat money side.

I am assuming that you already know that if something doesn't have a blanket anonymity it doesn't mean it couldn't have privacy via ZK. And you probably know that is for everyone's best interest if our financial sector DLT complies with strict privacy laws in EU.

While the EU directive is definitely hostile against privacy coins, this is not entirely correct. What's going (probably, if the directive passes the EU parliament's vote) to be banned is crypto assets service providers offering privacy coins accounts (at least this is an interpretation which can be made for the text I quote below), not the usage of privacy coins.

Source (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/plmrep/COMMITTEES/CJ12/AG/2024/03-19/1297044EN.pdf) (Art. 58, 1)

Your interpretation that this could decrease the interest of institutional investors, however, should be correct, as these operate on CEXes and ETFs or other similar products on regulated exchanges would then be impossible. But did institutional investors invest at any time in privacy coins? Only case I could identify is some "altcoin basket" product which could include Monero. I don't consider them important in this market segment (and much less for a small coin like Grin).

Brosef, the only thing "institutional investors" are buying is Bitcoin, maybe some eth now. Certainly not the #272 trash token with insiders owning the vast majority of supply making promises about tech that no one gives a duck about. Good luck coming into unrelated threads to shill your trash in the future.

I think people were initially drawn to Grin's similarities to Bitcoin in that it was a new technology with an anonymous founder. However a few things have contributed to it's current perception of abandonment. First was the launch date. Right in the middle of a bear market where crypto sentiment was low. I think this could have affected investors risk factor and subsequently grin's funding in its tender early days.

Next was the way the monetary policy played out. I guess it was no surprise to anyone that the price would flatten out but 5 years is a long time in crypto, so many lost patience.

Then there was the transaction graph scandal. I still hear people say that mimblewimble has a fundamental flaw and this narrative is still holding.

There is still a loyal following and the mining economy is strong so I think that grin is far from dead. However I believe that some significant changes are needed for it's situation to change, whether that be internally (new developments) or even externally (demand for privacy coins).

We have to decide whenever we want to please the regulators (at the cost of low privacy and limited freedom) or people's best interests. Bitcoin was created with a "cypherpunk vision" as an antithesis to Fiat (which is backed by corrupt banks and governments). The approval of spot ETFs and the institutionalization of crypto is definitely not a good sign. Even if that means higher market prices over the long term.

Was it always about making money? Or was it about making our world a better place? People seem to be missing the bigger picture. Many want to get rick quick, even if that means giving up their privacy and freedom. I see GRIN as a unique project not tied to the hands of "Wall Street", evil banks, governments, or corporations. Same goes with Monero. These coins may be hated by many, but they're our only escape route to government censorship and surveillance.

I'm fine with GRIN going down in market price, as long as the core Blockchain network remains actively developed and maintained by the community. Hopefully, decentralization will prevail in the long run. :)

i agree with totally. Except quick get rich scheme. If you look at hashrate and downward spiral price, some of them get quite RICH with insider info.

Understanding the complexity of the crypto market is a very difficult task as market conditions can change at any time. As you deal with the current market situation because a few months back only red market could be seen. I think many people were able to make good profits during this period especially those who were holding bitcoin. Honestly the name sounds so weird to me that I've lost track of the best buys of many top altcoins. To get profit from crypto you have to invest so if you don't want to invest then you won't get profit.

I've been looking again a bit into the stats and currently they're quite bleak at the first glance. Google Trends searches are very low, even if there was a little bit more interest than in 2022/23 lately.

https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/18/j1iy1.png

I however am not sure which could be the best search term here, but I think grin alone isn't enough.

Price has also unfortunately returned to the levels before the 2024 pump, hitting new lows when compared to Bitcoin. Here's a bit larger picture since the 2022 lows, including the important Grin/BTC chart:

https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/18/j1gGl.png

For someone new to Grin like me it can look like "should I really buy that?", but it also could be an opportunity, knowing that Grin is truly a quite unique coin. I can imagine that a part of the recent price decrease is to a generally weak altcoin market, but also the decision of the Ironbelly developer to end development (https://forum.grin.mw/t/ironbelly-is-spitting-fire-no-longer/11003)  (that seems to have been a mobile Grin app and was probably was MemurKafasi mentioned above) could have contributed. There seems to be some conflict in the community when reading the latest pages, and I don't really understand why, perhaps someone can enlighten me :) Reminds me a bit of Burstcoin (now Signum) also an interesting project but which lost traction due to continued conflict between the devs, followed by a rebranding which while it made sense could not revert the tendency until now.

I think the people complaining here are not devs, just salty bagholders and trolls. I think if you look at forum.grim.mw there's less trolling

As you would expect on a moderated Grin forum.

I just created a moderated Grin topic at [1] where one can also enjoy troll free Grin discussion...

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5493511.0

Well, privacy coins aren't as popular as NFTs or even "meme" coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. After all, most people have "nothing to hide". With US government cracking down on mixers, we should expect demand for privacy coins to decline over time. I wouldn't be surprised if governments (particularly the US) go as far as "banning" privacy coins from mainstream use.

GRIN is a good coin like Monero with a unique approach towards privacy and anonymity. If only it had the backing of mainstream investors, it would've gone to the moon by now. Fortunately, the core Blockchain network still works. As long as the community keeps it alive, nothing else matters. :D

I think (or hope) that the recent actions, and oversteps, by the US govt will start to remind people why we are here in the first place, and we will see renewed interest in so called "privacy coins".

It was over three decades ago this was published:
https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html


Fifteen years after that and fifteen years before today, Satoshi launched the first widely dispersed electronic money system that can't be shut down. Ten years ago Monero launched and added significantly more anonymity to the mix. And five years ago Grin launched with an efficient and fairly private blockchain, but more importantly imo a significantly more fair distribution or emission curve.

How do you make sure everyone in the world has a chance to get some coin? The only two viable options on the market today seem to be grin and worldcoin :D

https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.5501004813.9573/st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.jpg

Worldcoin? Isn't that the one created by Sam Altman (the founder of OpenAI)? I wouldn't call it a "privacy coin", especially when it used to collect biometric data from users. Not even the original Worldcoin project (with ticker WDC) has privacy features. Only GRIN and Monero have. They're considered the best privacy coins in the world. Monero has a larger community than GRIN because it's much older. It's also much more active in development and heavily-marketed across the web.

Despite that, GRIN is still going strong (even with declining interest in privacy coins among the general public). With mainstream governments getting stricter against crypto/Blockchain tech, I believe people will turn their attention to GRIN and the likes. It would only be a matter of time before this happens. Who knows how far will the GRIN project go? :D

He didn't claim it as a privacy coin, but as a fairly distributed coin. I strongly disagree however, since worldcoin founders can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, with or without making up fake identities.

The chart at [1] compares privacy features (and scalability) of various coins. Zcash offers the most, but (like Monero) at significant cost in scalability.

[1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart/8114

I didn't even say "fairly distributed" to be fair, just how do you make sure everyone has a chance to get some (fairly or unfairly I guess), and I used WorldCoin as one (bad) example. We only really know two ways to distribute coins afaik - mining and centralized distributor.

Very much so. Grin gang is still around and active with development. We're just playing with our highly scalable private by default currency with no addresses or amounts in peace.

Zcash is a corporate coin (Electric Coin Company/ECC), so I wouldn't trust it. Not like Grin or Monero which are community-owned cryptocurrencies. I've read articles online claiming ZEC has a backdoor allowing governments to access sensitive info when they need to. That was during Zcash's initial days when it had a trusted setup. Developers removed the need for a trusted setup with recent network upgrades, but I'm still skeptical.

Good-old GRIN is a much better choice, imo. It's one of the early privacy coins that made use of "Mimblewimble". Just like BEAM. Litecoin even adopted GRIN's privacy tech in its core wallet software. If GRIN development continues, it could become a solid project like Monero. We need as much privacy coins as possible to help counter governments' efforts of taking down mixers for good. Who knows what the future of the crypto industry will be? :D