The adoption of Monero by merchants and retailers continues to rise. That’s according to updated metrics from Cryptwerk, an online directory of companies, websites, shops and services where people can pay with bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies, such as monero. 

Monero is one of the more prominent and popularly transacted privacy coins in the cryptocurrency field, with almost $7 billion in market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.

Currently, monero is accepted at over 950 merchants on the site. In July of 2018, for comparison, only 41 merchants on Cryptwerk accepted monero. 

In the month of May alone, the number of merchants accepting monero on the platform rose by 31. The majority of merchants are also located in the U.S., which captured nearly 25% of merchants listed. The next closest was Russia, with just over 10%. 

There are 208 discounts and special offers if users pay with XMR. Cryptwerk also lists 28 payment gateways that allow merchants to accept XMR. 

Monero was the eighth-ranked coin out of 25 on the platform, in terms of its popularity with merchants.

The continued interest tracks as well with Monero’s own figures, looking at figures from April 2020 to April 2021. In that period Monero transactions grew from around 10,000 transactions per day to 23,000 transactions per day. During that same period. Monero's blockchain size grew 180% faster year over year, while the average transaction size dropped 13.76%. 

Responding to Cryptwerk's Reddit post, some users sought to add their companies to the directory. 

The concentration of merchants in the U.S. was interesting given that privacy coins have been under scrutiny. 

Last year, law firm Perkins Coie released a white paper contending that privacy-enabling cryptocurrencies were not in need of specific and ratched-up AML regulations. Parts of the paper pointed to the fact that these cryptocurrencies were no more risky than things like cash, for example. 

“Ultimately, absent evidence that existing AML regulations cannot adequately address the risks posed by privacy coins, there is no reason to impose new and overbroad AML requirements that specifically target privacy coins," wrote the authors.

UPDATE (May 18, 22:53 UTC): Corrected ticker symbol for Monero (it's XMR, not XRM)