With over 1,500 cryptocurrencies and tokens currently out there those that succeed need to be a cut above the rest. Anonymity and stealth transactions are in high demand as banks and governments strive to clampdown and gather identities of traders. One altcoin that has taken another step towards this is Verge which hard forked this week.
The Verge team announced the success of the fork in its Twitter feed and stated that stealth transactions are now being processed. The fork occurred at block 1,824,15o a few hours ago and systems are operating within normal parameters.
#Vergefam, we have successfully hard forked, stealth tx’s are now being processed.Thank you for all your support! $xvg #verge pic.twitter.com/s0e3n7vpVg
— vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) January 24, 2018
No new chain
The fork does not affect existing XVG tokens and there is no second version of Verge. It has been an upgrade to the existing blockchain to improve the technology and facilitate anonymous transfers. Verge is unique in that it gives the user the choice of having the transaction on the public ledger or private. This is achieved by the Wraith protocol which has due to be released at New Year but missed a few deadlines.
Crypto traders are fickle and many will act on the word of a shill or social media FUD so a selloff started. The price of XVG fell from an all-time high of $0.26 on December 24 to $0.06 during the crash last week. It is still down trending for the month as are most cryptos but could rebound on news that Wraith is finally underway and working. Over the past three months Verge has risen 1700% to its level today according to Livecoinwatch.com.
Hide and seek
Anonymous cryptos are becoming more popular in the wake of banks and governments seeking more transparency from exchanges. Their reasoning is to prevent money laundering and terrorism but collecting taxes is probably closer to the truth. Other altcoins offering anonymity include Monero, Zcoin, Zcash, and PivX. One common misconception among new users is that Bitcoin is anonymous however you still need a named account to use it and transactions are visible on the blockchain.
Being able to choose whether to remain anonymous or not will be a big appeal to those wanting peer-to-peer crypto transfers. This is essentially what they were originally intended for and huge profit driven exchanges have battered some of this ethos. The roadmap for Verge includes privacy based smart contract capability called Rootstock and an online store. The future could be bright for this altcoin.