What Is Monacoin?
Monacoin is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency and Litecoin hard fork that, like Dogecoin, is based on a popular internet meme. The project was conceived in December 2013 and based on Mona, an ASCII cat created in the late 1990s and popular in Japan. MONA is the native cryptocurrency of the Monacoin platform and serves as a vanilla peer-to-peer (P2P) digital currency.
Monacoin echoes the Japanese internet community’s cryptocurrency wishlist. It’s ASIC-resistant, shifting from Scrypt to the Lyra2REv2 mining algorithm to combat Scrypt-compliant ASIC miners like Vertcoin did. There’s a large coin supply (105,120,000), and block processing times are a lean 1.5 minutes (versus 2.5 minutes for Litecoin).
Of course, the ASIC industry is pushing hard for affordable ASIC miners that can crack Lyra2REv2. And Monacoin is competing with more than just Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin these days.
Can the cat-based Monacoin sustain the cult status its canine companion does, or will it lose all nine lives trying?
Let’s start our research into this project with a look at MONA, the proprietary cryptocurrency coin of the Monacoin project.
MONA Cryptocurrency Summary
As of December 15, 2018, the circulating supply of Monacoin is 64,370,225 out of a total supply of 105,120,000 MONA. The peak price of Monacoin so far was $19.75 on December 6, 2017.
Like we said above, MONA is mined using a Lyra2REv2 hashing algorithm. It also adjusts the mining difficulty every block using the Dark Gravity Wave v3 algorithm.
Despite its continued moves to stay ASIC-resistant, late 2018 saw ASIC mining rigs start to pop up in Asia that claim to be capable of mining MONA, VERT, and other Lyra2REv2 cryptos. It’ll be interesting to see how the ASIC resistance movement evolves throughout 2019.
Over $350,000 worth of MONA is traded on a daily basis. Cryptocurrency exchanges that accept MONA include Bitbank (where the majority of MONA trading occurs), Bittrex, Upbit, Livecoin, and CryptoBridge. MONA trading pairs include BTC and fiat JPY.
MONA can be stored in the Coinomi or Electrum Mona cryptocurrency wallets. Monacoin Core wallets are also available for a variety of platforms.