Author: Privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies Beam (BEAM) and Grin (GRIN) have managed to increase in value substantially over the past few days. Most of the gains were made following Binance’s recent announcement that they will no longer allow US traders to use the exchange.
Privacy-Focused Crypto On The Rise
A few privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies have seen splendid increases throughout the past few days. Namely, these include Beam, Grin, and Monero (XMR). Let’s have a look at each one individually.
Beam (BEAM) has increased by about 115% over the last 7 days. During the past 24 hours alone, the cryptocurrency is up more than 23%. BEAM prides itself as a cryptocurrency which allows completely private transactions without revealing the address or any other private information. Moreover, it also claims that users have complete control over their privacy.
Another fairly popular cryptocurrency which is also oriented towards complete privacy is Grin. Over the past 7 days, GRIN is up about 82%, while also marking an impressive increase of about 12% on the day.
Both Grin and Beam are based on the Mimblewimble protocol which became popular fairly recently. It relies on strong cryptographic primitives and it provides a framework for a blockchain which is centered around fungibility, privacy, and scalability.
It’s also worth mentioning that what is perhaps the most popular privacy-oriented cryptocurrency out there, Monero (XMR), has also seen a notable price appreciation. It’s up about 17% during the last week.
What’s Causing The Surge?
As it’s always the case, determining the exact reason for the surge of those cryptocurrencies is rather challenging. However, there are a few things which need to be outlined.
All of the mentioned coins are oriented heavily towards providing users with increased privacy. On June 14th, Cryptopotato reported that the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, will no longer allow traders from the US to trade on the platform. Looking at the chart shows that the majority of the gains in all of the three cryptocurrencies that we mentioned above are made exactly after this period.
In other words, at times where the biggest cryptocurrency exchange is preparing to shut the door on US traders, we can see a notable surge in privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies. While Binance has also said that it’s working on an alternative for US traders, it will be a lot more limited compared to the currently existing solution.
Hence, it could be that users are looking for increased privacy at times when the major exchange is looking to cut them out.
On another note, it can’t be overlooked that Bitcoin (BTC) also surged quite a bit throughout the weekend. The cryptocurrency finally broke the $9,000 level, currently sitting at around $9,150. Big moves of the kind also tend to bring other altcoins up. However, the increase in Grin and Beam is a lot more notable compared to that of other major altcoins, which is perhaps a reason to consider Binance’s decision as a more likely cause of the surge.
