XMR Monero in 2020: An overview of important events from end-of-year and beginning 2021: hacks, KYC and new records

The dream of peer-to-peer digital cash died in favour of corporate treasure reserves… If the spark of the cypherpunk dream is still alive anywhere, it is here in #Monero. (Timothy C. May)

I am xmrhero, and i prepared an overview of the news regarding Monero sorted in reverse chronological order.

As the past 45 days have been insane (see also the list from Seth Simmons regarding the attacks on the Monero network), i wanted to create an overview in order to picture what happened internally and externally. I for sure did forget things, please add them in the comments.

• 2021–01–02 Alisha Roy from AMBcrypto asks: “Will demand for Monero, other privacy coins increase as CBDCs become 2021’s reality?” (AMBcrypto). CBDCs can help Central Banks trace illicit activities and have been fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic as it forced the world to go cashless.
• 2021–01–01 Bittrex to Delist ‘Privacy Coins’ Monero, Dash and Zcash (Coindesk) — Andreas Antonopoulos calls it “totalitarian financial surveillance”. Jesse Powell (Kraken CEO) says ‘Haven’t heard of anything on the regulatory side. Presumably, it’s something specific to their [Bittrex] business’. Bittrex had only 0.07% of the *visible* volume of Monero.
• 2020–12–31 Darknet Giant White House Market Drops Bitcoin, Supports Monero Payments Only (bitcoin.com)
• 2020–12–27 SGP reports that “Monero transactions are up 287% since 2019 and 11% since November 2020. There have been 536,663 transactions so far this month according to CoinMetrics”. Also, the Feedback to the EU regulatory framework for crypto-assets has been posted by Monero Policy Working Group.
• 2020–12–15 Monero Breaks 2-Year High Amid Rising Concerns Over Online Ransom(Coindesk). “Although no monero-based ransom was demanded during the hack at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments or the Google outage on Monday, these events have made more companies worry about similar hacks”
• 2020–12–11 Monero Transactions per day hit all-time highs (BraveNewCoin). Dave Jevans of CipherTrace discusses “Fighting Against Money Laundering Schemes That Involve Monero” (Bankinfosecurity.com). There are alleged “patent applications for technology to trace Monero”. Also in the video is mentioned that “it is not possible to deterministically trace Monero”.
• 2020–12–08 A Brief Breakdown of Monero’s Ongoing Network Attacks (Seth Simmons)
• 2020–11–22 CipherTrace Files Patents For Tech That Can Trace Monero Transactions (decrypt). CipherTrace describes Monero as “the second-favorite cryptocurrency of choice among criminals, just behind bitcoin”. CipherTrace sells these anti-Monero technologies to the United States Department of Homeland Security as part of a $5 million contract, according to data from GovTribe. That accounts for 69% of the firm’s all federal government contract awards, worth a total of $7.4m. The patents, have not been approved yet.
• 2020–12–10 Ukrainian Politician Discloses Owning 180,000 Monero (Coindesk) and “Meet the 19-Year-Old Ukrainian Lawmaker With Millions in Monero” (also Coindesk). “Solod is thinking about […] buying some tokens from the freshly launched Efforce project supported by Apple co-founder Steve Wozlniak. (sic)
• 2020–11–14 Bitcoin — Monero (XMR) Atomic Swap Program Farcaster Begins
• 2020–11–12 Shapeshift delists privacy coins over regulatory concerns
• 2020–11–10 Monero Hit by Sybil Attack from ‘Incompetent Attacker’ (decrypt)