An anonymous account posts a coin called BitMonero
Username: thankful_for_today
No interviews
No roadmap threads
No grand vision
The community doesn’t like where it’s headed
So they do the most Monero thing possible
They fork it
Immediately
BitMonero becomes Monero “coin” in Esperanto
The original creator disappears and never reappears
And the tech itself Also anonymous
CryptoNote, 2013
Author: Nicolas van Saberhagen
A name that doesn’t exist
Ring signatures
Stealth addresses
Privacy by default
No founder, no foundation, no ownership
The early years weren’t glamorous
A handful of developers
Mostly volunteers
Some pseudonymous
Keeping the chain alive week to week
No VC money
No marketing push
Just slow, careful development
Eventually a public maintainer emerges
Riccardo Spagni — fluffypony
Not a founder
Never claimed to be
Just someone willing to do the work
Monero matures without central control
2020:
Network-layer privacy lands
Dandelion++ obfuscates transaction propagation
IP leaks addressed quietly
2022: Main emission ends
Tail emission begins
0.6 XMR per block. Forever
People panic
“Unlimited supply” headlines everywhere
Devs explain it’s about miner incentives and security
Monero chooses stability over narratives
Then comes the crackdown era
Privacy becomes a dirty word
Tornado Cash sanctioned
Developers targeted
Centralized teams collapse
Monero doesn’t flinch
No leader to arrest
No company to pressure
No server to seize
2025 tests it again
Hashrate concentration fears
Community reacts
Mining decentralizes further
Chain keeps producing blocks
January 2026.
Still running
Still upgrading
Still private
New releases
FCMP++ on the horizon
New ATHs
Satoshi vanished
monero made sure no one ever needed to
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Monero is weird in a way most people miss
There’s no founder story
No origin myth
No person to subpoena
It begins quietly 2014
Bitcointalk
An anonymous account posts a coin called BitMonero
Username: thankful_for_today
No interviews
No roadmap threads
No grand vision
The community doesn’t like where it’s headed
So they do the most Monero thing possible
They fork it
Immediately
BitMonero becomes Monero “coin” in Esperanto
The original creator disappears and never reappears
And the tech itself Also anonymous
CryptoNote, 2013
Author: Nicolas van Saberhagen
A name that doesn’t exist
Ring signatures
Stealth addresses
Privacy by default
No founder, no foundation, no ownership
The early years weren’t glamorous
A handful of developers
Mostly volunteers
Some pseudonymous
Keeping the chain alive week to week
No VC money
No marketing push
Just slow, careful development
Eventually a public maintainer emerges
Riccardo Spagni — fluffypony
Not a founder
Never claimed to be
Just someone willing to do the work
Monero matures without central control
2020:
Network-layer privacy lands
Dandelion++ obfuscates transaction propagation
IP leaks addressed quietly
2022:
Main emission ends
Tail emission begins
0.6 XMR per block. Forever
People panic
“Unlimited supply” headlines everywhere
Devs explain it’s about miner incentives and security
Monero chooses stability over narratives
Then comes the crackdown era
Privacy becomes a dirty word
Tornado Cash sanctioned
Developers targeted
Centralized teams collapse
Monero doesn’t flinch
No leader to arrest
No company to pressure
No server to seize
2025 tests it again
Hashrate concentration fears
Community reacts
Mining decentralizes further
Chain keeps producing blocks
January 2026.
Still running
Still upgrading
Still private
New releases
FCMP++ on the horizon
New ATHs
Satoshi vanished
monero made sure no one ever needed to