Can Monero survive exchange de-listings and low merchant adoption?

[NeuroticFish]

Many of them are still scared even by Bitcoin. The crypto-is-for-criminals narrative was more catchy than I would have expected.
With Bitcoin is simple: greed beats fear. With Monero, I fear it'll take quite some time, especially as it never seemed really focused on big rewards for investors.

Imho Monero's chance/choice is to be noticed by somebody important (like Dogecoin was noticed by Elon) as the proper currency for daily expenses.

I doubt a celebrity or influential person will endorse Monero. Especially when it's labeled as a "coin for criminals" by mainstream governments. Would anyone want their reputation tainted by supporting a controversial cryptocurrency? I think not. I'm afraid Monero will remain a niche to those who truly care about privacy. It won't be able to reach higher market prices in the long term, but at least it will remain useful.

All trading activities will be performed on decentralized exchanges, P2P exchanges, and in-person (F2F). Merchant adoption will continue to decline out of fear from government prosecution. It'll be a dark future for Monero and the crypto industry as a whole. With "Wall Street" in the game, we should expect regulations to become stricter in the long run. Nobody cares as long as they're able to make a profit, right?

While I do understand your point, I'll say "never say never".
Bitcoin was pretty much also seen as a coin for criminals and geeks at some point too, let's not forget that.
Of course, calling Bitcoin like that while it's an openly visible ledger is stupid, and of course, Monero is better suited for that job, hence some will always call it like that.

But I don't think that Monero beats fiat as "coin for criminals". And I hope that soon enough people will wake up an stop bashing this very good coin.
Also, as you said, Monero is not easy to get and not easy to convert back, hence it's not easy for the criminals to deal with it.

This being said, I hope that people will get to see Monero's value before it becomes too "niche".


PS. In the past few weeks Monero's price vs Bitcoin has recovered a little (and that's more than how much Bitcoin price vs fiat has dropped). Any idea why?

[Abu-Naim]

Do you think Monero will be able to survive this? Does it still have a future? As for LocalMonero, what other options are available for P2P trading? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

When it comes to privacy, many investors prefer Monero to Bitcoin because they have similar future of decentralization. I don't know why some exchanges are de-listing Monero, is it because they are not able to control any of their affairs due to decentralized nature.
Some good exchanges still have monero in their list of coins, I don't think it will be delisted in all exchanges.
But I never hear any news that people are using monero for criminal activities because only that will be the main reason to de-list the cooin with immediate effect.

[d5000]

PS. In the past few weeks Monero's price vs Bitcoin has recovered a little (and that's more than how much Bitcoin price vs fiat has dropped). Any idea why?

I'm not the only one who had predicted that recovery.

During the dump near the Binance delisting, there was massive demand for Monero on some of the exchanges who still offer it. On Exch, for example, they had to set the fee to 20% to protect their XMR holdings. Still their fee for BTC -> XMR is higher (5%) than XMR -> BTC (0,5%) which indicates that the demand for Monero is solidly above the available supply.

The Binance delisting dump was thus probably simply a undervaluation, and it is now correcting to its "fair" value. The way the dump itself evolved can be easily explained: first, traders on Binance tend to be retailers and thus have weak hands, and they simply panicked and sold (also amid fears the XMR could be "banned" everywhere). Second, during some time XMR withdrawals were stopped on Binance and that had probably deepened the panic.

So there are strong indicators that at the time where XMR traded around $110-130 there were some factors in play that did not really indicate a slowdown in real demand, so the price was distorted at that moment. If we look at the Monero transaction chart, for example, the numbers are quite stable. There were spam attacks in April/May which don't count of course, but after those wave it seems the number of transactions per day returned to a slightly higher level than before, and there are no significant changes between before/after the delisting. And there are decentralized market/exchange projects based on Monero which seem to have been making progress lately too, so the hope may have returned.

[Abiky]

There is a huge privacy gap in the crypto world that has been created with the seizure or closure of popular Bitcoin mixers and some No KYC p2p exchanges, as I pointed out earlier on. Most of the users are going to move to privacy leaning coins like Monero. Monero being the oldest and biggest will get a lion share of the users.

Someone said that even if Monero reached $1… Hold up, Like, how is it even going to reach $1? This is no TerraLuna or FTX token 

It could easily go down to $1, if mainstream adoption continues to decline. The removal of XMR trading pairs on centralized exchanges will give less exposure to the cryptocurrency. Only those who know about DEXs and P2P trading platforms will be able to obtain access to Monero. The rest of the people will be unaware of XMR as it will be completely removed from the centralized market. And if governments make it "illegal", things will be even worse.

With most people claiming "they have nothing to hide", privacy coins will become a niche in crypto land. At least the core Monero Blockchain network won't be going anywhere soon. That's assuming it stays decentralized and censorship-resistant. It'll be a "dark future" for privacy and freedom, so don't expect things to get better soon.

[patrickus]

Not only it will survive but in 2030, it will be the first crypto to be used in the world. People will need Monero to struggle against totalitarism.

[NeuroticFish]

On Exch, for example, they had to set the fee to 20% to protect their XMR holdings. Still their fee for BTC -> XMR is higher (5%) than XMR -> BTC (0,5%) which indicates that the demand for Monero is solidly above the available supply.

This is very interesting and, shame on me, I didn't notice that.

The Binance delisting dump was thus probably simply a undervaluation, and it is now correcting to its "fair" value. The way the dump itself evolved can be easily explained: first, traders on Binance tend to be retailers and thus have weak hands, and they simply panicked and sold (also amid fears the XMR could be "banned" everywhere). Second, during some time XMR withdrawals were stopped on Binance and that had probably deepened the panic.

A recovery after a panic sell is quite usual. And while I understand that it took some time for the traders make sure the price will not go further down badly before they've started taking it seriously again,... it took quite a lot until this recovery has started. Almost 4 months!

So there are strong indicators that at the time where XMR traded around $110-130 there were some factors in play that did not really indicate a slowdown in real demand, so the price was distorted at that moment. If we look at the Monero transaction chart, for example, the numbers are quite stable. There were spam attacks in April/May which don't count of course, but after those wave it seems the number of transactions per day returned to a slightly higher level than before, and there are no significant changes between before/after the delisting. And there are decentralized market/exchange projects based on Monero which seem to have been making progress lately too, so the hope may have returned.

Nice analysis!

I'll also add that I had a quite nice surprise to see Monero being traded here and there - in more places than I've expected. And I'm not a trader, I've only noticed it (!!)
With KYK-less exchanges gaining "market share", this trend has a good chance to continue/grow.
At least there's still hope.

[d5000]

A recovery after a panic sell is quite usual. And while I understand that it took some time for the traders make sure the price will not go further down badly before they've started taking it seriously again,... it took quite a lot until this recovery has started. Almost 4 months!

There was an immediate recovery from even less than $110 to $120-130. But the reason why it took so long for a more substantial recovery has two reasons for me.

First, there were more bad news incoming in the months following, for example the delisting on Kraken in several European countries, and the current version of the AML directive 6 in the EU which can be interpreted in a way that from 2027 on Monero accounts can't be traded on European (centralized) exchanges (I interpret it a little bit different, but the "de facto ban" interpretation is a real possibility). For sure these news triggered dumps, but the strong demand prevented XMR to fall to new lower lows.

In addition, I believe that as Binance (the biggest crypto exchange) is not longer listing it, strong bullish movements are less likely. In the altcoin sector I'm quite sure that these "green candles" are often triggered by retail traders FOMO on some centralized exchange, and Binance is the most likely place where this occurs as most other exchanges follow it. In general that could mean that a more diversified exchange landscape without a clear "price leader" could lead to more price stability. In this situation, this didn't benefit Monero but held it back a bit.

XMR has fallen again a bit lower (under $160) today, but that's not Monero's fault but was triggered by the weak Bitcoin price evolution.

[Abiky]

There was an immediate recovery from even less than $110 to $120-130. But the reason why it took so long for a more substantial recovery has two reasons for me.

First, there were more bad news incoming in the months following, for example the delisting on Kraken in several European countries, and the current version of the AML directive 6 in the EU which can be interpreted in a way that from 2027 on Monero accounts can't be traded on European (centralized) exchanges (I interpret it a little bit different, but the "de facto ban" interpretation is a real possibility). For sure these news triggered dumps, but the strong demand prevented XMR to fall to new lower lows.

In addition, I believe that as Binance (the biggest crypto exchange) is not longer listing it, strong bullish movements are less likely. In the altcoin sector I'm quite sure that these "green candles" are often triggered by retail traders FOMO on some centralized exchange, and Binance is the most likely place where this occurs as most other exchanges follow it. In general that could mean that a more diversified exchange landscape without a clear "price leader" could lead to more price stability. In this situation, this didn't benefit Monero but held it back a bit.

XMR has fallen again a bit lower (under $160) today, but that's not Monero's fault but was triggered by the weak Bitcoin price evolution.

If demand stays strong, we should have nothing to worry about. Monero might become stable enough (as in market price) to be used as a currency for day-to-day payments. Hopefully, prolonged bear markets won't affect XMR's value over time. With how things are going for Monero, I think it will turn into a better Bitcoin alternative. More decentralized, and private.

Who needs CEXs, the government, and "Wall Street"? Satoshi always wanted Bitcoin to be free from middlemen. It's likely Monero will fulfill Satoshi's original vision by being a truly-decentralized and censorship-resistant cryptocurrency. As long as it stays that way, no one will be able to stop it.