The team behind the most popular Bitcoin hardware wallet, Ledger, have begun integration of the anonymous crypto currency, Monero. This was announced by the Ledger CTO in a Reddit post.
All of the Ledger code base is open source as well which means that people can review and contribute to the project on github. They can also track the progress of the Monero integration. A Monero developer by the handle “Cslashm” mentioned that the team would streamline the integration process.
As we know that ‘Soon’ is not a correct answer to ‘when?, we plan an initial alpha code for the end of September. Until then, do not hesitate to comment the specification on github,
Monero has had quite an impressive run in the past few weeks. This was on the back of a release on the Bithump exchange. Bithump has the largest trading volume of any of the exchanges globally so it was only expected that a listing would elicit a large response in the price. Indeed, South Korean trading volumes were responsible for the recent run ups in a number of Alt coins.
From listing in the middle of August, the price of Monero went from just over $50 to over $140 in the space of only 2 weeks. This took the market cap of the cryptocurrency to over $2.2bn. This was however down slightly in recent days as the Crypto markets had a bit of a correction.
What is interesting about the move by Ledger is that it could have an impact on the long term value of Monero. We can only take a look at the example of Dash last year. Although they had a relatively rough start with their ICO, it was their partnership with the Jaxx hardware wallet that got them a lot of public notice.
This is unfortunately something that was not available on the Monero platform. There was generally less liquidity for the cryptocurrency than for many of the other Altcoins. The eventual integration of Monero functionality with Ledger as well as the inclusion of it on more exchanges will hopeful see demand skyrocket.
It seems as if Monero has already overtaken Dash, at least from the perspective of daily trading volume. From the Ledger team perspective, this is also a great opportunity for them to further cement their position as the top hardware wallet provider.
