Monero price rises 20% after Atomic Swap implementation

Monero (XMR), the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has posted a 20% price surge following the launch of the Atomic Swap implementation program last week.

On Friday, the Monero Project officially announced a rollout of the Atomic Swap implementation developed by the cross-blockchain protocol COMIT, aiming to simplify trades between XMR and Bitcoin (BTC).

Following the launch of Monero Atomic Swaps, XMR has seen a notable surge, with its price rising from around $265 on the launch day to an intraweek high of $331. At the time of writing, the privacy-centric cryptocurrency is trading at $318, down around 2.4% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto tracking website CoinGecko. Following a solid bullish trend on major crypto markets, XMR is up over 50% over the past 30 days.

Source: CoinGecko

Monero Project contributor ErCiccione said that the newly introduced swap deployment is a brand new technology that allows users to exchange BTC and XMR without relying on a trusted third party like a cryptocurrency exchange. “These swaps are called ‘atomic’ because they only have two possible outcomes: either the trade is successfully completed and each trader receives the other one's funds, or nothing happens and both traders keep the funds they started with,” he explained.

According to the announcement, users can now proceed with testing out XMR Atomic Swaps by downloading the COMET-designed software. ErCiccione cautioned users that the new swaps “might have unexpected bugs,” and recommended testing with small amounts.

Launched in 2014, XMR is a major privacy-focused cryptocurrency designed to support private and untrackable transactions. At the time of writing, Monero is the 30th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, valued at $5.7 billion.