Now Dream finally supports Monero, and having a quick browse today near enough every vendor (UK at least) has started accepting it, I thought it's worth doing a quick wrap up on what how and why to use XMR.
What is XMR?
XMR is a privacy focused cryptocurrency that uses advanced cryptography to hide where money is being sent, where it's sent from and how much was sent. It does this using several technologies such as ring signatures, ring CT's and stealth address's. You can read more about this on the website and the subreddit.
In short, XMR is:
- Private
- Cheap
- Fast
How do I get set up with a wallet etc?
XMR works pretty much the same as every other cryptocurrency. You have a wallet address where people can send you XMR and vendors / markets have XMR address's where you can send them XMR.
To use XMR you need a wallet. The official Monero wallet can be downloaded here and it's supported on Windows, Mac, Linux and multiple other OS's including TAILS. I don't think you need to run your Monero wallet on TAILS but if you want to you can and here's the guide.
Once you've downloaded and set up your wallet you'll get a wallet address. Here's a great guide to setting up the XMR wallet. You'll use this to receive XMR in the next step.
How to do I buy XMR?
There are two main ways. You can either directly buy it on localmonero or moneroforcash or you can buy a 'precursor coin' that's fast, cheap and easily available (like LTC or ETH on Coinbase) and use a site like Evercoin or (AM Shapeshift) to exchange the precursor coin for XMR. These aren't complicted exchanges, you don't need to sign up or give them any info or anything you just send them LTC/ETH and they send you XMR - end of story. The downside of this is that it involves a few transactions and although the fees are low you might incur more in fees just than buying direct. The upside is that it's super easy and fast if you already have a Coinbase account or something.
Over the last few weeks a lot more sellers have popped up on localmonero and the competition has pushed the prices down much closer to market rate so I'd say this is a very viable option now, location dependent, for those of you that love LBC etc. I just checked the UK and US listings and there are some good deals. If you live in Uzbekistan you might be out of luck.
Either way, the goal here is to get some XMR into your wallet. You can get your XMR address from the 'receive' tab of the GUI.
Here's a detailed guide I wrote a while ago
How do I get my XMR to the market
Here's the beauty of it. You just send it. No second wallet, no third wallet, no multiple OS's, no shady tumblers. You just send it.
The Monero development team are so confident in their security there is actually a cash reward if you can break the technology. Currently this reward is 1275 XMR (£287,000 / $405,000) - no one has claimed it yet.
You do this from the 'Send' tab of the GUI.
Just go to the wallet section of whatever market you're using and send the XMR to the address listed. Some markets might require you to include a payment ID with the TX so they can identify your transaction, there's a box for this in the GUI.
To activate your XMR wallet on Dream just add '/xmrWalletService' to the end of the URL. You can now filter listings to just show XMR listings as well.
XMR Quick Tips
- Set the fee to the lowest setting in the GUI. It'll still go through really quickly
- Run a full node if possible
- If you use a remote node use a VPN
- There is no reason to have more than one XMR wallet, save yourself the TX fees
- Don't trust web wallets
For further reading and any unanswered question's here's my XMR FAQ
And that's it folks. I think my Monero shilling days have come to an end - there's no where else to go from here, every single market accepts it and it's effectively a pre-requistie for new markets launching. PrinterPam will be delighted I'm sure.
Until next time,
TheKingofKingsMill