Monero's Origin Story: The Fork, the Privacy Tech and the Risks

Monero (XMR) began in April 2014 as BitMonero, a coin built on the pseudonymous CryptoNote white paper and launched on a forum by a user called thankful_for_today. Within weeks, Riccardo Spagni and six others forked the project away from him, leaving Monero with no company, no chief executive and no founder in control.

That origin story matters to holders of any coin, not only Monero. The video, presented by George Lee, uses it to raise three questions worth asking about everything in a portfolio: who got the coins first, who can change the rules, and how regulators could limit where a coin trades.

Who wrote the Monero white paper?

The Monero white paper is CryptoNote, published under the name Nicolas van Saberhagen, a pseudonym nobody has ever proven belongs to a real, identified person. In a clip shown in the video, Riccardo Spagni says it is unknown whether the name covers one person or several, and that the first code was written by another pseudonym, Antonio Juarez.

CryptoNote is dated December 2012, with an updated version dated October 2013. Critics later argued those dates were fake. Its main idea was that Bitcoin’s open ledger, where anyone can follow the money, was a flaw rather than a feature. It combined techniques such as ring signatures and one-time addresses to make payments hard to link.

What was the Bytecoin pre-mine accusation?

The first coin to use CryptoNote was Bytecoin, and critics accused it of a hidden pre-mine. Bytecoin’s blockchain claimed to have started in 2012, but it only became publicly known in March 2014. Critics, including Spagni, argued its early history had been mined in secret and that roughly 80% of all coins that would ever exist were created before the public could mine any.

A pre-mine means insiders hold coins that cost them almost nothing and can sell them later to everyone else. The video compares it to raffle organizers quietly handing themselves most of the tickets before announcing the draw. The accusation against Bytecoin has never been proven either way, but it shaped what came next.

How was Monero taken from its own founder?

Monero was taken from its launcher through a fork, which in plain English means copying the code and carrying on without the original owner. On April 18, 2014, thankful_for_today launched BitMonero on Bitcoin Talk, starting from zero so nobody had a head start. According to the people who took over, he wanted changes the community didn’t support and wouldn’t listen.

In a 2018 talk shown in the video, Spagni says he and six others forked the project and became its “stewards,” which he describes as controlling the GitHub repository and the domain, and little else. The community version won within weeks and took the name Monero, which means coin in Esperanto.

That moment set the project’s structure. According to the video:

• Monero has no company, no chief executive and no founder who can pull the strings.
• Spagni stepped down as lead maintainer in December 2019, and the project carried on.
• No development fund is taken from each block. Developers post proposals on a community crowdfunding system and supporters donate to the ones they want built.
• There was no pre-mine. Every coin was created by public mining from day one.

How does Monero hide transactions?

Monero hides the sender, the receiver and the amount, all three of which are visible on Bitcoin. Spagni lists four privacy features in the video:

Feature	What it hides	How it works
Stealth addresses	Where a payment goes	You share one public address, and each sender turns it into a new one-time address only you can recognize
Ring signatures	Who sent it	Your spend is mixed with decoys so observers only know one member of the group sent it
RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions)	How much was sent	Observers can’t tell whether you sent five coins or 5,000
Dandelion++ (added 2020)	The sender’s IP address	Hides where a transaction came from on the internet

In a Monero community film shown in the video, Dr. Daniel Kim explains that ring signatures originally lined each sender up with 10 decoys, so all anyone could know was that one of 11 people sent the money. The video says Monero later raised that to 16, so each spend now hides among 15 decoys.

The video gives two reasons this matters. The first is privacy: Kim compares Bitcoin to a bank pinning your monthly statement on a public bulletin board. The second is fungibility, meaning every unit is interchangeable. On a transparent chain, a coin can carry its history, and some services may refuse coins that once passed through a hacked exchange, even years later. With Monero there is no visible history to refuse. For a comparison with another privacy coin’s design, see Bullrunners’ piece on the Zcash trusted setup ceremony.

How does Monero mining and supply work?

Monero is designed so ordinary computers can mine it, and it has no fixed supply cap. Spagni says in the video that Monero resists ASICs, the specialized mining machines that dominate Bitcoin, because the white paper named “egalitarian mining” as a goal. Monero changed its mining formula several times to keep those machines out, and in November 2019 switched to RandomX, designed to run best on ordinary processors.

In 2022 Monero also moved to a tail emission. Instead of stopping at a fixed cap, as described in what happens when all 21 million bitcoin are mined, Monero pays miners 0.6 XMR per block indefinitely. Supporters say this guarantees miners are always paid to secure the network even if fees stay low. Critics point out that the supply never stops growing, though the growth rate shrinks each year.

Why do exchanges and regulators keep pushing Monero out?

Monero’s privacy conflicts with rules that expect exchanges to know who their customers pay and are paid by. The video lists a series of pressure points:

1. September 2020: the IRS offered up to $625,000 for tools to trace Monero.
2. February 6, 2024: Binance said it would drop Monero. The Monero project’s account replied the same day.
3. October 31, 2024: Kraken halted Monero trading in Europe.
4. August 2025: a project called Qubic pointed large amounts of mining power at Monero and rewrote six blocks of its history. That is not the same as stealing coins, but it showed a well-funded group could push the network around. Kraken paused Monero deposits for a while afterward. Whether Qubic ever controlled more than half the mining power is still debated, the video notes.
5. July 2027: under new EU anti-money laundering rules, banks, exchanges and other crypto firms in the EU won’t be allowed to handle coins like Monero.

The video also acknowledges that criminals use Monero, with researchers tracking it in ransomware demands and darknet markets. Supporters answer that cash is also used by criminals and remains legal. Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, argues in a clip that targeted investigation with probable cause and due process is acceptable, and that the real concern is surveillance of everyone all the time. Researchers have also published papers on ways Monero’s older rings could leak clues. If a coin you hold faces delisting, Bullrunners’ guide on how to protect coins before an exchange closes covers the practical steps.

What is FCMP++ and when does it arrive?

FCMP++ is the largest planned upgrade in Monero’s history, and as of the end of September 2026 it was still in testing with no main network date. Instead of hiding among 15 decoys, each spent coin would hide among all eligible outputs on the blockchain. The video compares it to hiding in a crowd of 100 million instead of a group of 16. It would also close some of the clues researchers have used to guess which ring member was real.

In August 2026, the security firm Trail of Bits, hired by the Monero charity MAGIC Grants, reviewed part of the cryptography behind FCMP++. According to the video, it found no high, medium or low severity issues, only minor informational notes. The video’s advice is to treat FCMP++ as coming, not here.

A three-question test for any coin you hold

The video turns Monero’s history into a test that works for any coin:

1. Start at the launch. Monero’s story began with anger at an alleged head start. Ask who got the coins first, how much, and on what terms.
2. Look for the strings. Monero’s launcher was forked out and its best-known leader stepped aside. Ask whether one person or company could rewrite the rules overnight, and what would stop them.
3. Look past the code to the rule makers. A coin can be technically strong and still get squeezed off exchanges. Factor regulatory and listing risk in before you buy, not after.

What to watch next

For Monero specifically, two dates matter. The first is any main network date for FCMP++, which had none at the end of September 2026. The second is July 2027, when EU rules will stop regulated firms there from handling coins like Monero, changing where and how people in Europe can trade it. Beyond Monero, the three questions above are worth running against every coin you hold, starting with how its supply began.