The cryptocurrency industry has been experiencing some heavy turmoil regarding regulation in the past year. With the SEC going after high-profile entities like Coinbase, Kraken, and Bittrex, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty looming in the markets.
That being said, Monero (XMR) remains one of the least-impacted assets. This privacy-focused crypto has found its niche market and doesn’t correlate with the rest of the industry — for the most part.
So, is it the right time to swap BTC to XMR? Is the privacy coin the best way to secure your assets in these uncertain times for crypto? We try to answer these questions by analyzing the Bitcoin and Monero fundamentals and market performance.
News From BTC World
Bitcoin has been experiencing some interesting developments in the last few months. After the introduction of Bitcoin ordinals, there has been a revival of interest in the original crypto network.
Ordinals allow satoshi transactions to be inscribed with specific data and act as NFTs on smart contract networks. However, in contrast to NFTs, they don’t require a separate token on the blockchain but exist as proof in the original transaction blocks on Bitcoin.
This reinforces the Bitcoin ethos and increases the usage the network could provide in the future. Moreover, ordinals and BRC-20 tokens require backspace on the Bitcoin network. While this can be detrimental in the short term because of the higher transaction fees, it will ultimately incentivize miners down the road to continue to provide their services in the future.
BTC Market Analysis
As the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has gone through multiple market cycles, bullish and bearish. During the last significant cycle that happened in 2021, Bitcoin managed to reach a new all-time high price of $69,000, marking the top of the cycle.
In 2022, the bear market caused the price to retrace as low as $15,800, which many analysts consider to be the bottom of this cycle. Currently, BTC is trading at around $27,000.
BTC Price Prediction
Analysts remain confident that Bitcoin will soon pick up the pace and find upwards momentum. Consequently, Priceprediction.net provides us with some extremely bullish predictions for the near future.
For 2024, the website expects BTC to reach as high as $59,352.69, nearly a 3x increase from the current levels. This makes it a great opportunity to purchase BTC now on platforms such as https://godex.io/. For 2025, the forecast is even higher, with a target of $87,180.99 per BTC.
Digitalcoinprice.com goes even further, with predictions of up to $99,000 for 2025. The long-term is even more appealing, with an eye-watering $286,246.53 price target for 2030.
XMR Overview
Monero is the leading privacy cryptocurrency in the industry. Thanks to its Ring CT signatures, this blockchain has successfully managed to keep transactions on its network completely anonymous. At one point, the IRS even offered a bounty upwards of $625,000 to whoever would crack Monero, to no avail.
Consequently, XMR has managed to remain quite popular in the industry, as it allows you to obfuscate your crypto transactions. Moreover, it adds a layer of security to your holdings, as they cannot be linked to your personal information.
Thanks to this, Monero managed to reach similar all-time highs in both 2018 and 2021 — at around $450 per coin. Currently, XMR is trading at around $150.
XMR Price Forecast
While analysts are expecting a bull run in the near future, this allows them to provide some decent forecasts for XMR.
Digitalcoinprice.com gives a target of $555 for 2025 and goes as high as $1,606 for 2030. Priceprediction.net provides a forecast of $495.89 and $3,238.20 for 2025 and 2030 respectively.
Is It the Right Time to Exchange BTC for XMR?
While on paper Bitcoin seems like a sure value, Monero has quite a few aces up its sleeve. The XMR cryptocurrency manages to conserve good value even in bear markets, which makes it a great hedging investment when volatility is high. Consequently, converting a portion of your BTC into XMR can be a smart move, from an investment standpoint, but also to conserve your privacy.