This step-by-step guide on how to buy Monero (XMR) will walk you through the steps on buying Monero with USD on Binance safely and securely. These are the best ways to invest and trade XMR. This cryptocurrency buying guide is meant for for beginners and starting investors.
You may also be interested in this Comprehensive Guide to Monero or browsing the Monero section of the site for Mining Monero.
About Monero
Monero has proven itself to be private, secure, untraceable, and trustless.
Monero can’t be hacked to steal your funds, due to the power of distributed consensus. This means that you are responsible for your own money, and don’t have to trust any entity to keep it safe for you.
The power of the blockchain usually increases security at the cost of privacy, but with Monero’s sophisticated privacy-centric technology, you get all of the security benefits of the blockchain without any of the privacy trade-offs.
By taking advantage of ring signatures, Monero makes it ambiguous which funds have been spent, and thus extremely unlikely that a transaction could be linked to any particular user.
Because of its on-by-default privacy technologies, Monero is fungible, which means that one Monero will always be equal to another. This ensures that there will be no discrimination over the origin or history of your coins, lessening the worry of potential blacklisting by exchanges or vendors.
This post has been updated for February: How to Buy Monero
How to Buy Monero in the US
Quick reference instructions, followed by more detailed instructions and screenshots below.
- Open an account on Coinbase.
- Open an account on Binance.
- Buy Ethereum ETH on Coinbase. ETH has a lower exchange and conversion fee and is faster than Bitcoin.
- Fund your Binance account with the Ethereum you just purchased. Note: Coinbase will charge a $14.25 transfer fee, so make sure you purchase and send enough to make it worth it. I recommend at least $500 at a time.
- Open the Exchange page on Binance and trade as you will.
The reason you must fund Coinbase first is the company accepts FIAT currencies, i.e USD, EUR, etc. From there, you can take your FIAT converted to ETH and purchase Monero, or any other coin at Binance.
These two companies are the most reputable I have currently encountered and used. Fees are reasonable compared to other options I’ve tried.
Fee roundup:
Coinbase: $14.25 to transfer to Binance
Binance: 0.1% trading fee.
Binance: Free to withdraw from Binance back to Coinbase.
Coinbase to Bank Account ACH: Free.
Total estimated fees on a $500 investment based on January 2018 rates:Â $19.25
Binance
Open an account in Binance.
Verify as necessary. The further verifications provided, the more you can deposit and withdraw at a time.
Click over to Funds, then Deposits and Withdrawals. You will be presented with a screen showing all of the available cryptocurrencies.
Click on Deposit for Ethereum.
You will be presented with an address to send your Ethereum to as a deposit. Copy the one time use address from Binance and paste it into the Coinbase accounts page under the Send button. The screenshot below shows BTC, but you will want to click on ETH.
Once the fund have finished transferring, head over to the Binance exchange.
Binance allows you to set limit, market, and stop-limit orders on buying and selling.
You are on your own from here. Good luck! To withdraw from Binance, go back to the Funds Deposits and Withdrawals page and click on the Withdrawal button for whatever currency you have.
Step by Step Instructions for using Binance
Now that your Ethereum has been successfully added, you can click Funds, then Deposits Withdrawals. Right in front of the coin you transferred, the total balance should reflect the value of Bitcoin or Ethereum you transferred.
- Click on Exchange, right beside the Binance Logo, then select the Basic option.
- On the Exchange page, look to the top right corner where you find the market pairs section above Trade History.
- Look for the market pair you want to exchange. In this case, locate the XMR/ETH pair and click (search for XMR/BTC if you funded your account with Bitcoin).
- The page loads the XMR/ETH pair, and you are set to exchange your coins for XMR.
- Beneath the chart, locate Buy XMR section.
- The first box shows the value of ETH per XMR to be purchased.
- The second box is for you to enter the amount (number of coins) of XMR you want to exchange for your BTC or ETH you funded.
- Below the Amount box, you have options to use 25%, 50%, 75%, or all of your deposited funds to buy the XMR cryptocurrency.
- The total box shows you how much BTC or ETH you are paying to buy the quantity of XMR you entered.
- Click the Buy XMR button.
Within some few seconds, you should have the XMR you have exchanged credited to your XMR wallet on the Binance platform.
Your XMR cryptocurrency is now available to be sent out to your wallet outside the exchange.
Is Monero (XMR) a Good Investment?
Monero’s Upcoming Developments
Bulletproofs – A Reduction in Transaction Sizes and Fees
Since the introduction of Ring Confidential Transactions (Ring CT), transaction amounts have been hidden in Monero, albeit at the cost of increased transaction fees and sizes. In order to mitigate this issue, Bulletproofs will soon be added to reduce both fees and transaction size by 80% to 90%. This is great news for those transacting smaller USD amounts as people commonly complained Monero’s fees were too high! Not any longer though! More information can be found here. Bulletproofs are already working on the Monero testnet, and developers were aiming to introduce them in March 2018, however it could be delayed in order to ensure everything is tried and tested.
Multisig
Multisig has recently been merged! Mulitsig, also called multisignature, is the requirement for a transaction to have two or more signatures before it can be executed. Multisig transactions and addresses are indistinguishable from normal transactions and addresses in Monero, and provide more security than single-signature transactions. It is believed this will lead to additional marketplaces and exchanges to supporting Monero.
Kovri
Kovri is an implementation of the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) network. Kovri uses both garlic encryption and garlic routing to create a private, protected overlay-network across the internet. This overlay-network provides users with the ability to effectively hide their geographical location and internet IP address. The good news is Kovri is under heavy development and will be available soon. Unlike other coins’ false privacy claims, Kovri is a game changer as it will further elevate Monero as the king of privacy.
Mobile Wallets
There is already a working Android Wallet called Monerujo available in the Google Play Store. X Wallet is an IOS mobile wallet. One of the X Wallet developers recently announced they are very, very close to being listed in the Apple App Store, however are having some issues with getting it approved. The official Monero IOS and Android wallets, along with the MyMonero IOS and Android wallets, are also almost ready to be released, and can be expected very soon.
Hardware Wallets
Hardware wallets are currently being developed and nearing completion. Because Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol, it means it requires unique development in order to allow hardware wallet integration. The Ledger Nano S will be adding Monero support by the end of Q1 2018. There is a recent update here too. Even better, for the first time ever in cryptocurrency history, the Monero community banded together to fund the development of an exclusive Monero Hardware Wallet, and will be available in Q2 2018, costing only about $20! In addition, the CEO of Trezor has offered a 10BTC bounty to whoever can provide the software to allow Monero integration. Someone can be seen to already be working on that here.
TAILS Operating System Integration
Monero is in the progress of being packaged in order for it to be integrated into TAILS and ready to use upon install. TAILS is the operating system popularised by Edward Snowden and is commonly used by those requiring privacy such as journalists wanting to protect themselves and sources, human-right defenders organizing in repressive contexts, citizens facing national emergencies, domestic violence survivors escaping from their abusers, and consequently, darknet market users.
In the meantime, for those users who wish to use TAILS with Monero, u/Electric_sheep01 has provided Sheep’s Noob guide to Monero GUI in Tails 3.2, which is a step-by-step guide with screenshots explaining how to setup Monero in TAILS, and is very easy to follow.
Mandatory Hardforks
Unlike other coins, Monero receives a protocol upgrade every 6 months in March and September. Think of it as a Consensus Protocol Update. Monero’s hard forks ensure quality development takes place, while preventing political or ideological issues from hindering progress.
Dynamic fees
Many cryptocurrencies have an arbitrary block size limit. Although Monero has a limit, it is adaptive based on the past 100 blocks. Similarly, fees change based on transaction volume. As more transactions are processed on the Monero network, the block size limit slowly increases and the fees slowly decrease. The opposite effect also holds true. This means that the more transactions that take place, the cheaper the fees!
Monero Research Lab
Monero has a group of anonymous/pseudo-anonymous university academics actively researching, developing, and publishing academic papers in order to improve Monero. See here and here. The Monero Research Lab are acquainted with other members of cryptocurrency academic community to ensure when new research or technology is uncovered, it can be reviewed and decided upon whether it would be beneficial to Monero. This ensures Monero will always remain a leading cryptocurrency. A recent end of 2017 update from a MRL researcher can be found here.