DO NOT USE CLOSED SOURCE WALLETS such as exodus, as software that are not open source can do shady things in the background without anyone knowing about it
DO NOT KEEP FUNDS IN EXCHANGES:
If you dont have your keys then it's not your coins, coins that are stored on exchanges do not belong to you since those exchanges dont share the private keys/mnemonic seed with you, you might not have heard of Mt. Gox yet but every centralized exchanges can do exactly that at any point in time
Instead, you can make a paper wallet, for example with the offline paper wallet generator by opening the `.html` file in an offline browser and writing down the 25 words mnemonic seed to backup your keys
- WHAT IS MONERO AND WHAT IS IT AIMING AT TO BEYou might have heard about "NFTs", well, Monero is the complete opposite of that as it's aiming to be fully fungible, same way as cash is
It's widely known nowadays that 1 BTC != 1 BTC due to it's lack of fungibility, every bitcoin has an history and can be refused, blocked or even censored at the protocol level (BIP 119 was the proposal that would allow to censor bitcoin at the protocol level)
Monero fixes that due to it's privacy nature, 1 XMR = 1 XMR, same way as a banknote would be accepted by merchants like any other banknotes without discrimination from their potential hiistory
It's also aiming at being fully decentralized and not controlled by corporations, ASIC manufacturers and such
It's mining algorithm allows it to be mined by most people using general purpose hardware they already have, unlike bitcoin which is centralized through specialized hardware
So by being on CPU, it allows anyone with a desktop, laptop, phone, single board computer (raspberry pi, odroid...) to support the network
Back in 2020 when china banned mining, we could see on the graphs that all the cryptocurrency mining power went down, except monero that kept going up at the time due to it's actual decentralized nature unlike bitcoin
It is very cheap to transact, can literally buy your daily coffee with it for only half a cent in fees that are going back to miners
Unlike bitcoin which is extremely expensive (few dollars) to send a single transaction
(Which, bitcoin is trying to solve their issues by adopting "layer 2 solutions" (such as segwit back in 2017 and now Lightning Network that are meant to take the fees offchain), issue with those solutions is that, the fees that were meant to be mined by miners are now being taken offchain so that removes the incentive for miners to keep supporting the network when the block reward will be getting lower after few more halving and will eventually lead to layer 1 network security issues in few years, hence why bitcoin solutions to bitcoin are creating more issues than they solving and the reason why Monero already solves those straight up from layer 1 through the "tail emission" for miners with that constant 0.6 block reward + network fees)- WHERE TO USE MONERO- https://shopinbit.com
in europe: have computers, computer parts, laptops, phones, general electronic, bikes, electric bikes, sports/workout thingies, lineup for self care and such, cars, custom car license plate, bunch of thingies [...]
they dont even requires a customer account (can still make one if you need package tracking but works well without), also have the "concierge service" which is basically personal shopper, can send them a link from anything like amazon or whatever, pay them in monero and they'll do the purchase for you
- https://coincards.com
USA/Canada giftcards/coupons for like amazon, some food/groceries and such (they released their numbers few months ago that monero got ahead of bitcoin from their userbase in USA)
- CAKEPAY from their cake mobile wallets: https://cakewallet.com and https://monero.com (they're the same wallet from same team, only difference is that the cake one is multi currency)
here's a youtube video of techlore using it to order pizza, rent hotel room or whatever: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=gFIg2ycs5-s
- https://bitrefill.com
worldwide: similar to coincards so like, giftcards/coupons for like amazon, local food/groceries stores (also things like just-eat and such), ikea, some clothings or whatever, phones top-up, thingies for video games so like blizzard, steam, riot games balance etc
actually bought my D2 and D2R copies thanks to that one :3
unfortunately they dont accept monero just yet (even tho their CEO did an interview on their youtube channel few months ago: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=ZZekMo4mCg4 saying that there is only 2 real coins out there which are bitcoin and monero)
so maybe soon, in the meantime, can use https://trocador.app with the "Payment" option to pay them by sending monero and it'll automatically do the conversion to send them any other cryptocoin they may accept without registration required
- https://travala.com
hotels, flights around the world, they been accepting monero for few years now
- https://moneromarket.io
like ebay with monero
- https://allark.app
giftcards and options to cash out through sepa, paypal, cash by mail [...]
- https://silent.link and https://simxl.com
eSims providers
- https://kycnot.me/services
lists a few services that also accepts monero such as vpn, vps providers, personnal shoppers and such
- Some more lists can be found over: https://www.getmonero.org/community/merchants/ and https://acceptedhere.io/
- HOW TO ACQUIRE MONERO:If you dont already have any other cryptocoins:
- Mining
https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig is the software that can mine, there is a bunch of people mining on the network so you might not get much, maybe just to cover the electricity costs, so like, could just run some mining in winter to have free heating (at electricity cost basically)
- https://trocador.app
doesnt require registration, can do it straight up from the front page, it uses swap exchanges such as https://simpleswap.io in case of purchasing through debit card or redirects to localmonero for peer to peer:
- https://localmonero.co
local sellers/buyers of monero, prefered option with less tracking and avoiding kyc would be with "cash by mail", "cash locally" or also "cash by ATM" which is giving an ATM code to the seller so they could withdraw cash directly from an ATM with it
- https://haveno.exchange (WIP)
currently not out yet, HavenoDEX (https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno) will be same principle as localmonero but as an actual decentralized exchange, it's a fork of https://bisq.network but based on monero instead of bitcoin, and also has an other fork of it that was being worked on at some point (Penumbra: https://github.com/l0nelyc0w/Penumbra)
- https://kraken.com
centralized KYC'd exchanges are to be avoided but if it's your only option (which it shouldnt) then could use it if kraken is available in your country, there's also binance in europe that has xmr, still, centralized exchanges (especially binance are to be avoided)
If you already have other cryptocoins such as bitcoin:- ADDITIONAL LINKSWhy KYC is actually dangerous, is putting people at risk and should be avoided:
https://bitcoinqna.github.io/noKYConly/https://anarkiocrypto.medium.com/why-the-states-monopoly-on-identity-is-more-dangerous-than-google-facebook-and-microsoft-4ce415793d7ehttps://anarkiocrypto.medium.com/the-rarely-discussed-dangers-of-kyc-in-crypto-and-daily-life-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-20f2b5894439Overall good practice to adopt:
https://blog.keys.casa/how-to-protect-your-bitcoin-from-5-wrench-attacks/To not end up in that list..:
https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks/blob/master/README.mdBitcoin's fungibility graveyard, why bitcoin doesnt work as a currency and how it keeps failing over and over again:
https://sethforprivacy.com/posts/fungibility-graveyard/cipherpunk and crypto-anarchist manifestos:
https://activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.htmlhttps://activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.htmlmonero charts and metrics:
https://moneroj.net/coincardsmonero news, what's new and what's what:
https://monero.observermonero community crowdfunding system (CCS):
https://ccs.getmonero.orgto help you fund your projects related to monero
and if wanna buy me a coffee or whatever, here's my address lol:
Code
42oK1ttyF1nMK5T8u8RXmabV3wu48jrKh17k8XHANnwzLjoY5EsriXJNPLWDbQTNGUbUJETcJYxXT7uVqNtJs12sTqdwzCd
anyways, now feel free to read more about what's up and what's what, make a wallet as well to actually be your own bank, is pretty quick
the
TL:DR no tech-savvy version is literally install the cakewallet thingy and start using it
the more tech-savvy version would be to compile yourself from source code, run your own node and some more in-depth thingies regarding opsec and whatnot, is open source so like don't trust, verify