To be completely transparent, a fair amount of my portfolio is invested in XSPEC. Of course this means I may not be the most unbiased source, but I've done my due diligence by doing a fair share of research and felt that it might be appreciated to give it a nice overview for those who are new with Spectre. It would actually be alarming if I didn't have anything invested after writing a post like this.
Another privacy coin?I won't repeat all the reasons why privacy coins are, and will increase to be, an important part of the cryptocurrency market as I assume most people here will be well aware of this fact. Currently, we have a couple of big players such as Zcash, Pivx, NAV and more, with of course Monero at the very top. All these have their own nice characteristics where other coins may be lacking, so this is not to say these coins are not good. However, Spectrecoin is in my view one of the privacy coins that has one of the most potentials to become part of the leading privacy coins. Let's see why:
What is Spectrecoin?To quote directly from the /r/XSPEC page, as they are definitely more capable to explain their own product:
Spectrecoin (XSPEC) is the premier privacy-focused cryptocurrency, featuring an energy-efficient proof-of-stake algorithm providing fast transaction confirmations, and a fully integrated Tor+OBFS4 layer for network privacy. Spectrecoin is actively developed, with an ambitious roadmap that prioritizes privacy, security, and true decentralization with innovative features such as low-power mobile wallet staking in our upcoming Android wallet
20,000,000 XSPEC was created in a genesis transaction and 95% of the XSPEC supply was sold to investors in late 2016. As of mid 2017, this ICO ranks as the *5th best performing ICO in history in terms of return on investment for our investors. Our ICO performance earned us a mention in the New York Times.
StatsCurrent market cap: $61.753.020 / 5.318 BTC
Price per coin: $2.97 / 0,00025585 BTC a pop
Current markets: mainly Cryptopia and Livecoin
Consensus: Proof of Stake 3.0
Ring signatures
Stealth and regular addresses
A minimum of 5% yearly interest
Block time: 60 seconds
Tech overview and comparison
What sets XSPEC apart from e.g. Monero, Zcash etc?Okay, so the two things that excite me most is the ability for stealth staking and the fully integrated Tor+OBFS4 layer. Other things like ring signatures and stealth addresses are of course very nice safety features, but this is nothing new (e.g. Monero and Zcash both use ring sigs, Monero also uses stealth addresses).
So Spectre uses proof of stake as a method of consensus, which is a much more energy-friendly method to do verifications on the blockchain. Individuals don't mine, they stake based on the amount of XSPEC in their wallet which in turn decides the likelihood of receiving the block reward. Monero is an amazing coin and valued so highly for a reason, but the fact that it uses proof of work is still quite problematic as it simply wastes tons of energy.
Stealth stakingAs of yet, stealth staking is in development. Version 2.0 will feature default stealth staking (set to launch Q2 this year). This is huge. First of all, to my knowledge there is no other privacy coin that has this possibility. Stealth staking means that an individual's wallet information will remain anonymous even if one is using the contents to stake. This used to be quite a hurdle for all PoS coins out there, and of course brings into question the true privacy of a privacy coin if individuals cant stake their coins anonymously.
Tor+OBFS4 integrationI'll admit, at first I had to google the OBFS4 part. What this basically means though, is that IP activity is untraceable by means of the Tor network, which means that the coin can safely be used in countries that tend to ban traffic from and to certain IP's (China, Russia). Its safe to say these are big markets, where internet freedom will be greatly appreciated. Thus since Spectre runs over the Tor network, IP addresses are safely obfuscated. If this would not be the case, you could get into some nasty problems with service providers monitoring your internet traffic to determine the origin of your transaction. With net neutrality you can imagine that this is a problem more than ever.
Current standingsAs mentioned above, the current market cap is around 60mill. This is incredibly low, especially when taking into consideration all the impressive tech and its unique contributions. The roadmap is worth a read, and it must be a more-than-good year if everything is achieved. They already have one of the better wallets that I have seen so far, with an integrated anonymous chat.
The lead developer, jbg, is very open to any kind of input and is happy to share any information about the entire project. Just ask him in the slack channel.
Oh yeah, just to mention it again, it is currently the fifth best returning ICO ever, just behind Ethereum. So if you're only in for the money you are definitely not too late yet, although hopefully you'd also be in for the promising tech.
Some questions I frequently ran intoQ: 'Its a privacy coin, but it has a richlist? What gives?'
A: Yes there's a richlist, but this has been obsolete for quite some time now. Spectre was created based on ShadowCash which used to have no ring signatures. Stealth transactions have been supported for a long time now, and will become the default option in v2.0.
/u/Trainasauruswrecks explained this quite nicely
Q: 'If it's so great, why isn't it at e.g. > 200M yet?'
A: Of course there can be many reasons why this is, first of all its a relatively new coin and this entire market is in its baby shoes. Personally, I think a big part of this also comes from the fact that it appeared to me that jbg (lead developer) prioritized the tech much more than the marketing.
Of course this is not a terrible attribute in a developer, but you can have a fantastic product which still nobody will adopt if they don't know about it. This may have been my only worry up until recently, since it's become quite clear that he listened to supporters in the Slack channel as there is clearly someone marketing going on since not too long ago. The website just got a big overhaul and the Twitter account is clearly more active.
Q: 'why is there no information about the team on the website, seems sketchy?'
A: No idea why this is asked regularly, but obviously creators of a privacycoin do not want their faces on the internet associated with tech that allows you to e.g. circumvent Chinese and Russian internet laws.
Finally, as most people here I am probably not quite the privacy expert. I simply read as much as I could find about the project and general principles in the market. Therefore, if I missed anything or if there are certain claims that are faulty, please let me know. I am very open for discussion and will obviously change anything that may be wrong.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/spectrecoin/#socialhttps://spectreproject.io 
