Bitcoin's privacy is melting, forcing criminals to find another currency of choice.
Advances in software tools adopted by law enforcers to monitor people using bitcoin have sent criminals chasing Monero and other new virtual currencies designed to avoid tracking, Bloomberg reported.
Authorities have adopted software in a bid to crack down on crime and prevent money laundering.
However, the European Union's law-enforcement agency, Europol, has said that "other cryptocurrencies such as Monero, ethereum and Zcash are gaining popularity within the digital underground," Bloomberg reported.
On Dec. 18, hackers targeted up to 190,000 WordPress sites per hour and got them to produce Monero.
Joseph Battaglia, a special agent working at the FBI's Cyber Division in New York City, expressed concerns over Monero's use among criminals.
"There are obviously going to be issues if some of the more difficult to work with cryptocurrencies become popular," he said, according to Coin Desk.
"Monero is one that comes to mind, where it's not very obvious what the transaction path is or what the actual value of the transaction is except to the end users."
Global financing website, Investing.com noted that Monero uses CryptoNote technology protocol, which is an expansion upon the ideas driving Bitcoin.
The difference is that, where Bitcoin's transparent blockchain allows anyone to see who sent or received coins, transactions made via CryptoNote cannot be traced.
This means that the identity of senders and receivers of coins remains anonymous.
Monero's value has skyrocketed, with the virtual currency gaining more than 3,000 percent in the past year, according to Investing.com.
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