Let’s just start right there, since most people don’t know a lot about Monero besides just seeing it somewhere below bitcoin. Monero was launched in April 2014, which was a long time after bitcoin, and it had one key difference in mind – privacy. Part of the allure of cryptocurrencies was that they kept the users’ identities anonymous. Once you created a wallet, it would only be identified by a private key generated by random characters instead of your name or adress. At first, this was sufficient privacy, but as cryptocurrencies like bitcoin started getting more attention, it’s not so much anymore.
You see, the private keys and the transactions are recorded on a public ledger for everyone to see. Even though it doesn’t show your exact name, it is possible to connect the dots and get an idea of who is doing what. It just takes an analysis of the history of a particular address. People still crave that anonymity, and several cryptocurrencies have been designed to do just that. For example, Dash, Zcash and Monero.