I didn't get the concept of privacy coins until a while ago. 

Simply put, a privacy coin is one that you can make encrypted transactions with.

There are some regular privacy coins that just encrypt your transaction details do no one knows who you're sending what to.

And then there are the over the top ones, like Monero. They encrypt basically everything, from the sender to the amount, recipient address and even the transaction ID. The sender doesn't know the receiver, and vice versa.

Now we know what they are. The question is why would anyone need them?

It's simple.

If you want to send someone an anonymous gift, or if you want to commit crimes or buy illegal stuff, then you'd need a privacy coin.

Bitcoin was used to buy illegal stuff and also commit crimes before, but there is a public ledger of all the transactions that occured using bitcoin. So it was pretty easy to search for who sent what where. And because the amount sent and received wasn't hidden, it made investigations of such crimes much easier.

But with the advent of privacy coins, it has led to completely anonymous transactions.

There are a few privacy coins out there, but the most notable has got to be monero.

It is widely used, has a large market cap and trades pretty well. It equally has a pretty decent price, so it isn't a crap coin and won't be dying soon. The team behind monero also pushes out updates to the coin very often.

So why did I make this post?

Simple. I want to see what the future might hold for privacy coins.

You see, more and more people are starting to value privacy over other features. And that is a good thing.

We shouldn't have to give out our data to people we don't know or trust. And while this data is most often used for our own good, we can't despite the fact that it can be used against us, or worse sold to bad people.

So I can definitely see the market for privacy coins being a big one.

And let's not forget that you can trade monero on exchanges. And it trades very well.

You can also mine it with your CPU, this earning some for free. Just don't expect to become Bill Gates through this method.

Hang on though. Won't these coins be used for bad things too?

Well, that's the whole basis of the privacy coin. People buying arms and drugs and other illegal things online don't want their purchases to be traced back to them. So they use privacy coins to block the details of the transaction.

And while they are misused frequently, we can't dispute the fact that their pros outweigh their cons.

Thanks for reading.