Why Privacy Coins Such As Pirate Chain and Monero Need Qortal

Introduction

Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Pirate Chain (ARRR) and Monero (XMR) represent more than just digital money. They symbolize a movement towards financial freedom and anonymity. These coins use cutting-edge cryptography to keep transactions confidential, empowering users to control their own wealth without any snooping possible. Yet, even the most private coin is only as effective as the platform on which it operates.

In today’s internet, dominated by centralized exchanges and Big Tech intermediaries, truly private peer-to-peer usage of these coins remains challenging. This is where Qortal comes in! Qortal offers a decentralized, censorship-proof infrastructure, essentially an alternative internet, that complements the ideals of privacy coins. It provides the peer-to-peer (P2P) solutions and censorship-proof environment that coins like Pirate Chain and Monero desperately need to reach their full potential. Engaging and community-driven, Qortal isn’t just another blockchain project; it’s a philosophical stand for individual digital sovereignty and privacy in the Web3 era. Let’s explore why privacy coin lovers and Web3 enthusiasts are looking to Qortal as the next piece of the puzzle in the fight for freedom.

The Philosophy of Privacy and Decentralization

Privacy coins emerged from a desire for personal liberty in finance. Monero, for example, uses advanced cryptography to hide sender, receiver, and amounts, ensuring transactions remain confidential and untraceable. Pirate Chain pushes privacy even further by shielding 100% of peer-to-peer transactions with zk-SNARKs, making it “highly anonymous and private” by design.¹ The philosophy behind these projects is to empower individuals, allowing anyone to transact without surveillance, much like using digital cash.

This ethos naturally extends beyond just coins; it envisions an internet where no central authority can censor or control our interactions. However, a stark irony exists today: users of privacy coins often find themselves forced back into the arms of centralized platforms to actually use those coins. Buying, selling, or spending Monero or ARRR typically means using exchanges or services that demand personal information or can block transactions. In other words, a coin that is private on-chain can still be compromised off-chain by the very infrastructure it relies on. This conflict creates a philosophical tension: how can we achieve true financial privacy when the “pipes” our transactions flow through are owned by entities that prefer transparency (of our data) over privacy?

What’s needed is an alternative route, a wholly decentralized way to transact and communicate that upholds the same values of privacy and freedom that Monero, Pirate Chain, and other privacy coins champion. This means no centralized servers logging our activity, no corporations or governments able to step in and say “you can’t do that,” and no single points of failure. It sounds ambitious, but this is precisely the vision that Qortal embodies. Qortal was founded on principles of decentralization and self-sovereignty: it’s a platform “built from the ground up to be fully decentralized, peer-to-peer, and truly censorship-proof”, creating a “parallel economy” for the internet.

In essence, Qortal extends the philosophy of privacy coins to the entire digital realm, and not just hiding transaction details, but removing any overlords from the equation altogether.

Challenges Privacy Coins Face in the Current Landscape

To appreciate why Qortal is so important, we first need to look at the challenges that privacy coins like Monero and Pirate Chain face today. Despite their technical brilliance, these coins operate in a world that often views privacy as a threat. Regulatory pressures and censorship have made it difficult for privacy coins to gain mainstream traction. In recent years, several major exchanges have delisted or restricted Monero, Zcash, and other privacy coins under the guise of regulatory compliance. For example, at the end of 2023 the exchange OKX announced it would cease trading Monero (along with other privacy coins) citing vague listing criteria.²

OKX regularly delists coins from its platforms for various reasons. Centralization at its finest.³

Kraken, another large exchange, had to “conclude we have no choice but to delist Monero in the European Economic Area (EEA) due to regulatory changes”, effectively bowing to pressure from new EU rules against anonymous crypto.⁴ Users were given a deadline to withdraw their XMR before Kraken would convert it to Bitcoin and close all positions. Such moves underscore how even reputable exchanges are caught between the ethos of privacy and the demands of regulators. Government policies in some regions outright ban privacy coins. Japan and South Korea were early to forbid trading of anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies, essentially chasing coins like Monero out of their markets.. Australia saw exchanges voluntarily drop privacy tokens due to regulatory guidance, and even Dubai prohibited all activities involving privacy coins.⁴

Kraken was forced to ban Monero (XMR) in the European Union to comply with MiCA⁵

These crackdowns make it abundantly clear: the traditional, centralized crypto infrastructure is becoming hostile territory for privacy coins. It’s not that Monero or Pirate Chain themselves have been compromised, the protocols remain secure, but the on-ramps and off-ramps (exchanges, hosted wallets, payment processors) are being choked off. Imagine owning a stash of XMR or ARRR for its privacy features, only to find you can hardly use it because every exchange either wants your full identity or has dropped support altogether. Frustrating, right? All of this begs for a solution: privacy coins need a refuge, a place where they are not just tolerated but welcomed, where no one can censor them or their users. They need a platform that is as private and censorship-proof as the coins themselves.

Enter Qortal: The Censorship-Proof P2P Infrastructure

What if there were an entire network designed to remove middlemen and single points of control, just as privacy coins remove banks from money? Qortal is exactly that. It is as “a peer-to-peer, blockchain platform designed to offer an alternative to the existing internet, without any centralized entities or control”.⁶

Those aren’t just buzzwords: Qortal has taken concrete steps to achieve true decentralization at every level. Every user who joins Qortal is encouraged to run a full node, even on something as small as a Raspberry Pi

By doing so, users collectively form a distributed network that powers Qortal’s services. There are “no AWS cloud servers, no centralized failure points, and no reliance on any third parties” on this network. In simpler terms: if you’re using Qortal, you’re directly connected to other people, not funneled through Big Tech’s servers. This architecture makes Qortal naturally resistant to censorship. Data on Qortal is stored via Qortal’s Data Network (QDN) in an encrypted, chunked form spread across nodes, and the blockchain only stores references (hashes) to that data.⁷

No central server can be raided or shut down to erase content, as there is no central server. The more people join and run nodes, the more resilient and censorship-proof the network becomes, offering a path to true digital independence for every Qortian. This means that on Qortal, your messages, websites, and transactions aren’t at the mercy of any corporation or government. They live on a community-run network of nodes that no adversary can silence. For privacy coin users, this is a game changer. Qortal’s network treats all data and transactions equally, with no ability to spy or censor based on content. If you send a payment over Qortal or use a Qortal application, it’s just encrypted data flowing directly to the recipient through a swarm of volunteer nodes. No one in the middle can peek at it or block it. Essentially, Qortal extends the privacy assurance beyond the coin’s blockchain to the transport layer itself. Monero may hide transaction details on its own chain, and Pirate Chain may fully anonymize its transfers, but once you step out to the broader internet, you can be exposed.

Qortal provides a safe haven where those coins can operate without stepping out into the panopticon of the normal web.

Privacy Coins + Qortal: A Perfect Match for True Peer-to-Peer Privacy

Let’s connect the dots: why do privacy coins need Qortal, and what does Qortal offer specifically for coins like Pirate Chain and Monero? The answer lies in synergy: privacy coins secure your transaction details, and Qortal secures the platform on which those transactions occur. Together, they enable a level of freedom that neither could achieve alone.

Censorship-Proof Transactions

On Qortal, trading or transacting with privacy coins can be done without any centralized exchange or permission. Qortal’s built-in Trade Portal called Q-Trade, is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that operates cross-chain. In fact, Qortal supports fully peer-to-peer atomic trades between QORT (Qortal’s native coin) and several other assets, including Pirate Chain ARRR.⁸

The Trade Portal executes swaps directly from one blockchain to another. There are no escrow agents or middle servers holding your funds; it’s trustless and purely P2P. This means if you want to swap your Pirate Chain for QORT or other supported coins, you do so without registering on an exchange, without KYC, and without fear of a third-party freezing your account. The significance for privacy coins is huge, and it restores the ability to trade value freely. Pirate Chain’s team themselves acknowledge Qortal as a “fully functional decentralized ARRR wallet, [supporting] cross-chain trades in the Trade Portal”.⁹

Integrated Wallets and User Experience

Qortal makes it easy to use privacy coins by integrating them at the account level. When you create a Qortal account, the system can generate wallets for multiple coins under the hood. For example, Pirate Chain (ARRR) is already part of the Qortal ecosystem as a supported coin. Upon joining, a user can have an ARRR wallet associated with their Qortal account. There’s no need to download a separate Pirate Chain wallet and sync the whole blockchain; Qortal’s infrastructure handles that in a decentralized way. This unified approach means privacy lovers get a one-stop solution. You run your Qortal node, and it gives you access to send/receive Pirate Chain, QORT, and other coins seamlessly. It’s like having a multi-crypto wallet that’s built into a decentralized internet platform. The convenience cannot be understated: many newcomers shy away from privacy coins because setting up various obscure wallets and navigating peer-to-peer trades is daunting. Qortal smooths that out by providing a user-friendly interface (Qortal Hub) where privacy coins are first-class citizens.

Real Utility in Decentralized Apps

Perhaps the most exciting aspect is that Qortal isn’t just about trading coins; it’s about using them in a vibrant decentralized economy. Qortal supports a variety of Q-Apps, which are decentralized applications that run on its network, and that allow people to do everything from social networking to e-commerce without centralized servers.¹⁰

Privacy coins plug directly into this ecosystem as a medium of exchange. For instance, Qortal has Q-Shop, a decentralized marketplace app. On Q-Shop, anyone can become an online merchant by publishing a store on the blockchain and selling goods or services without relying on Amazon, eBay, or any centralized platform.¹¹

Payments on Q-Shop can be made with Qortal’s native coin QORT, but notably, Pirate Chain (ARRR) is also supported as a currency within Q-Apps like Q-Shop. In fact, you can set up a Q-Shop and accept ARRR from customers for your products. Imagine that: selling your art, t-shirts, or digital downloads for Pirate Chain in a completely decentralized marketplace! This is already reality for ARRR on Qortal! Monero is not yet integrated at the time of writing, but it’s easy to see the potential and need. If Monero were added to Qortal, it could similarly be traded and used P2P without any exchange involvement. This would effectively route around the deplatforming that Monero users have faced. When Kraken in Europe and Binance in some jurisdictions won’t deal with XMR, a network like Qortal stands as an independent alternative where Monero could live on its own terms. Privacy coin communities often talk about being ungovernable and creating parallel systems; Qortal is exactly a parallel system for the internet and finance. It allows an opt-out from the surveillance-heavy status quo.

Example of a purchase being made in ARRR on Q-Shop

Philosophical Alignment and Community

Both privacy coins and Qortal are driven by communities with a strong ideological backbone, valuing privacy, freedom, and decentralization. By joining forces (i.e., using privacy coins on Qortal), these communities strengthen each other. Monero’s slogan has long been about financial privacy for everyone, and Pirate Chain markets itself as the most private digital cash on the seas of cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, Qortal aims to “rebuild the internet entirely” in a way that empowers individuals.

There is a natural alignment here: the Web3 privacy lovers and the Qortal pioneers are essentially different fronts of the same broader decentralization movement. On Qortal, privacy coin enthusiasts will find themselves among like-minded folks, those who run Qortal nodes are, by definition, supporters of decentralized tech and likely value privacy highly. This means a supportive ecosystem: new projects, marketplaces, or social platforms that emerge on Qortal are likely to integrate privacy features and coins. For example, a decentralized social media Q-App (like the Friends app) could easily include options to tip creators in Monero or ARRR, enabling private patronage. The Q-Fund app also exists for decentralized crowdfunding, which could technically accept donations in privacy coins, allowing fundraising for causes without revealing donor identities or risking platform censorship.¹²

All these possibilities flow naturally when a privacy-focused currency operates on a privacy-focused platform.

A New Horizon for Web3 Privacy Enthusiasts

It’s clear that privacy coins and Qortal complement each other like pieces of a puzzle. Monero and Pirate Chain solved the problem of private money, and Qortal is solving the problem of a free and decentralized platform to use that money. Together, they point towards a future of unstoppable, private peer-to-peer commerce and communication. This is a future where you might buy groceries from a neighbor’s Q-Shop with Pirate Chain, fund a community project via a Q-Fund campaign in Monero, and chat about it on a censorship-free social app, all without anyone watching or meddling. It’s a future where our digital interactions respect our rights as much as our offline face-to-face interactions do. For privacy lovers and Web3 enthusiasts, the marriage of coins like ARRR and XMR with a network like Qortal is a match made in heaven. It removes the lingering reliance on systems that don’t share our values. No longer do we have to trust centralized exchanges or web platforms that could betray our privacy at any moment.

Conclusion

Privacy coins like Pirate Chain and Monero were created to give power back to the individual in the realm of finance. Qortal was created to give power back to the individual in every realm of the digital world. It’s only natural that they come together. In a time when governments and corporations increasingly surveil and control the flow of information and wealth, the combination of a privacy-preserving currency and a censorship-proof platform is revolutionary.

By giving privacy coins a P2P, censorship-proof highway to travel on, Qortal lets them fulfill their true purpose: empowering individuals to transact and communicate without oversight. For those of us who believe in the right to privacy and the promise of blockchain technology to enhance liberty, this partnership isn’t just advantageous: it’s essential. The journey to digital freedom is far from over, but with privacy coins riding on Qortal, we’ve taken a bold step towards a world where our money and our speech are truly ours.

Qortal, Pirate Chain, and Monero create the perfect trifecta for complete data privacy on the web!

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11. Ferrari, J. (2025, February 13). How Qortal Revolutionized E-Commerce. Qortal Blog. https://qortal.dev/blog/qortal-dev-blog-M7rHvqiCfu

12. Ferrari, J. (2025, February 6). How Qortal Revolutionized Crowdfunding. Qortal Blog. https://qortal.dev/blog/qortal-dev-blog-lqn375xXCM