Now that we know what Monero is and why it's so anonymous.
In this lecture, I want to talk about how we can buy Monero anonymously.
Now, this task was much more challenging when we were talking about Bitcoin because as mentioned before,
Bitcoin's ledger or the blockchain is entirely public.
Therefore, if our identity is linked to an address, any transaction sent to and from this address
will be linked to our identity.
This is not the case with Monero.
As mentioned in the previous lecture, Monero uses ring signatures to hide the source of funds and stealth
addresses to hide the receiver.
Therefore, if the blockchain is analyzed, there will be no useful information regarding the senders
and receivers.
Not only that, even the sender wants the money is sent from the sender.
The sender doesn't really know where the money is going again due to the use of stealth addresses,
which are not the real address.
So when you give a receiving address to a sender, this address is only used once.
And it's not your real actual address.
It's only an address to be used for a transaction.
Therefore, if you think of it, you can actually buy Monero using any method and this method will be
much more anonymous than using bitcoins.
So even if you verify your identity when buying Monero, once you transfer your coins from the website
that you bought it to your own local wallet, this money becomes untraceable and unthinkable to the
account that you used to buy Monero.
The only way that this can be linked to you is if you make a mistake, an opsec mistake and someone
hacks into your computer.
Or if you are forced by a law enforcement agency to give information about where you use that.
Monero So they'll be able to see that you bought Monero on X website, but they won't know which wallet
this Monero went to and what it was used for unless you go ahead and give them the information yourself.
With that being said, there are some methods that would be more private and more anonymous because
sometimes we just don't want to share our identity and our private information with online websites,
even if this identity will not be linked to our wallet.
It's just not ideal.
What if that website gets hacked?
What about the employees working in it and the list goes on again similar to any privacy concern.
So just like bitcoin, the most anonymous way of getting Monero is to mine it yourself.
Use a powerful computer to help maintain the Monero blockchain and with doing that you will be awarded
Xlm or Monero coins and then use that to purchase or send funds to friends and family.
Now doing that is not simple.
I can actually make a full course on that and it's not feasible to everybody.
That's why I'm not going to cover it in this course.
The other option is, again, something that we discussed when we were buying bitcoins is to use an
exchange so you can use any exchange you want.
Like I said, even if the exchange requires you to verify your identity, that's fine, because once
the funds leave the exchange, they will be untraceable and they won't be able to link your actual identity
to your Monero wallet.
Not only that, but some exchanges will not even require you to verify your identity if you're buying
small amounts.
Now, these exchanges change their policies all the time, so the ones that don't require identity verification
now will probably require it in the future.
And others that require it right now might not require it.
Therefore, the best thing to do is to come to get Monero go to exchanges.
I will include this link in the resources of this lecture and go over them, see which ones are allowing
people to buy Monero without verifying identity.
And if you can't find any, again, it's okay to verify your identity and buy one arrow because like
I said, your identity will still not be link able to your wallet.
Some popular ones in here are Bittrex, Binance, Bisque and Bitfinex.
Now there are other good ones here.
Like I said, go over them, read their policy before using them.
But most of the ones that are listed here are pretty good anyway, and using them is very, very easy.
It's usually the same.
You click on the website, you sign up, you buy Monero and then you transfer it to your wallet.
And I will explain how to transfer funds to and from your wallet in the next lectures.
I'm not going to cover that, though, because like I said, it is not ideal.
At the end of the day, you still might have to verify your identity.
And even though it's not linked to your wallet, a lot of us might not want to share our identity with
third party websites.
Another really good option is to exchange an existing cryptocurrency with Monero.
So with this option, we can use our bitcoins that we already obtained anonymously using a Bitcoin using
a P2P service or a Bitcoin ATM or one of the other methods that we discussed earlier and then exchange
it to Monero.
So we already obtained our coins in an anonymous way, and then we're buying Monero, which is even
more anonymous because it hides information about the sender, receiver and the amount.
Therefore, the coins in our local Monero wallet will be very, very anonymous.
This is a really good option and can be used in so many scenarios.
You can even use it if you have coins that are not anonymous and exchange them to Monero to increase
their anonymity and become more private.
Therefore, I will spend a full lecture talking about how to do this.
So stay tuned for that.
Another option is to use an ATM similar to what we did with Bitcoin, and you can actually use the same
website to find ATMs that sell Monero.
So the same website coin atm radar dot com, you scroll down or you put your country in the search box
and you can uncheck everything here in the left and only keep Monero checked to get the ATMs that only
support Monero.
Now, as you can see, there aren't many.
There are much less than Bitcoin.
And in my country, in Ireland, there aren't any.
So this option might not be applicable to everybody.
But if there is a Monero ATM, then this is a really good option if you can buy it with cash.
All you have to do is just go put the receiving address of your wallet and you'll receive the funds
in your wallet.
Very similar to what we did with Bitcoin ATMs.
Therefore, there is no point of covering it again.
But you can go and revise the lecture where I use the bitcoin atm.
If you want more information about it.
Last but not least, you can use a peer to peer service.
Again, we showed off a similar service for Bitcoin.
For Monero, it's exactly the same.
You just need to use a different website.
The website is called Local Monero Dot Co.
The way it works is very similar to the Bitcoin website.
All you have to do is put the amount that you want to buy.
For example, let's say I want to buy €25 worth of bitcoin.
You put the country in my case, it's Ireland and we're looking for all online offers.
So from this dropdown list, you can list all of the payment methods.
As you can see, you can pay cash, which is very, very anonymous.
You can do cash by mail, you can do cash at ATM.
So there are a number of methods.
Once you're happy with all the options, you click on search and you'll get all the local sellers that
will allow you to buy Monero using the payment method that you selected.
Now, as you can see, again in my country in Ireland of unfortunately there aren't any local sellers,
but if you pick a bigger country such as the United States, you will actually see a number of sellers
that will sell you Monero by cash, by mail and other anonymous payment services.
Again, using this as very simple, all you'll have to do is click on Buy.
Follow the instructions.
Send the money to your local Monero address, which I will show you in the next lecture.
And that's pretty much it.
You'll have the money in your wallet.
And because you're using Monero, the money is untraceable and unthinkable to previous transactions.
So that's it for this lecture.
Just wanted to list the main methods that you can use to buy Monero anonymously.
And in the next lecture, we'll talk about how to exchange it with other cryptocurrencies and we'll
see how to send and receive Monero.