Criminals are believed to be shifting towards alternatives like monero as Bitcoin's privacy weakens
The EU's law-enforcement agency, Europol, reported that monero, ethereum, and Zcash were gaining popularity within the digital underground - as analytic firms get better at flagging cryptocurrencies linked to crime or money laundering.
In an interview with Bloomberg, a technology company founder in Dubai said that "monero is now one of the favourites, if not the favourite in ransomware attacks".
Monero is different to its peers as it encrypts the recipient's address on its blockchain and generates fake addresses to obscure the real sender. It also obscures the amount of the transaction. That's pretty much the perfect cover for criminals.
Monero's performance in the latter stages of 2017 surpassed that of Bitcoin, and according to CoinMarketCap, it sits at 11th place in terms of cryptocurrencies sorted by market cap. Monero started 2017 at roughly $13, and is now trading at $373.
