Monero (XMR) implements Atomic Swaps causing its price to jump 20%

Monero (XMR/USD) is still the largest privacy coin in the crypto industry, especially after the recent price increase that the project saw following the implementation of the Atomic Swap feature. The project announced the rollout of Atomic Swap last Friday after it has been developed by COMIT, a growing cross-chain protocol.

COMIT’s goal in developing the new solution for XMR was to try and simplify trades between Monero and Bitcoin. This is an important thing to do for privacy coins, in general, as their increased privacy when performing transactions makes them undesirable in most countries’ exchanges.

However, a side effect of launching the new solution was a significant surge in interest in Monero, causing XMR to skyrocket by 20%. The coin’s price went from $265 to $331 in only a few days.

Monero’s price has retracted slightly since then, trading at $319 at the time of writing, August 24th. Still, the price surge came as an additional increase on top of a solid bullish trend that ruled the market recently, which allowed Monero to go up by 50% over the past 30 days.

The importance of Atomic Swaps

While important for the coin’s position and future activity, the price surge is still only a side effect of the Atomic Swap rollout, which is significantly more important. In fact, ErCiccione, Monero’s contributor, stated that this is brand new technology that will allow users to exchange BTC for XMR and vice versa directly, without needing to use the exchanges.

The ‘atomic’ part of the name comes from two possible outcomes, where the trade is either successfully completed, or nothing happens, which increases safety of the traders’ funds.

Atomic Swaps can now be tested by regular users who might be interested in trying them out. All it takes is to download the COMET-made software and find a trading partner. Still, the technology only just came out, and ErCiccione warned users to be careful, as bugs are still a possibility. The software is still in its testing phase, so it would be best to use only small amounts for the time being.