I’ve been holding Monero (XMR) for a while now- currently it makes up about 10% of my crypto portfolio. I live in Europe and over the past year it’s become nearly impossible to buy XMR directly with EUR.

Most exchanges have delisted it or disabled EUR/XMR pairs. Even when using a VPN or international account, I still have to buy BTC/USDT and then swap it for XMR via third-party platforms — which adds fees, spreads, and extra steps.

I keep hearing two conflicting arguments about Monero:

1. Monero is doomed
Governments are targeting it, so it’ll get harder to buy/sell, impossible to cash out, and useless for real-world purchases. It can’t scale and it’s being choked off before it can go mainstream.

2. Monero is working exactly as intended
The fact that governments are trying to suppress it proves it’s untraceable. Institutions don’t promote it because they can’t control it like BTC. The privacy works — that’s why they hate it.

I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m not expecting huge gains, but I still believe XMR has a role. Why? Because it’s still one of the only cryptos actually being used to buy things (like on darknet markets, where privacy matters). As long as it’s being used, there’ll be demand.

What do you think?