1) I have never bought cryptocurrencies in my life and am a total newbie.
2) I want to buy Monero with FIAT from a place that doesn’t require KYC.
I don’t mind using my credit card or even PayPal, but I am absolutely not comfortable sending pictures of my ID to anyone. My bank offers virtual credit cards, so my name won’t be on the card, but obviously, my bank will know about the transaction.
It’s my understanding that P2P markets are the best place for that.
Is RetoSwap a good place? It came up when I searched on Mullvad. If not, what do you recommend?
3) I want to buy $10 to $20 USD worth of Monero max.
I vaguely remember visiting various P2P markets years ago, and I had noticed that often the minimum purchase amount was often over $100 USD. Since this is my first time, I don’t want to spend that much, also I can’t afford to spend that much, and one of the services I want to buy from (SMSPool) costs less than $1 USD.
4) The place I buy from can’t be geo-locked.
Meaning that it shouldn’t require that I be physically in a specific country, have ties to a specific country (e.g.: have a US bank account) or be on a platform that’s exclusive to certain countries (e.g.: Venmo).
Thanks for taking the time to respond and for the references that you shared. Why LTC? Why not BitCoin? My interested in cryptocurrencies limited to privacy, hence my interest in Monero.
Why is it not possible to buy Monero with FIAT on trocador?
Don’t know. Monero.com is not available in my country but through Cake Wallet I could buy it with a bank transfer without any KYC.
To be honest, with Monero (unlike Bitcoin) it’s not really important to avoid KYC because the counterparty only know that you bought some Monero from them but not what you did with it or how much you have in total.
I am open to doing a bank transfer, but that would obviously taker longer if it’s international. Also, I suspenct that doing an international bank transfer for $10 would probably cost just as much or almost.
That may be so, but to me there is a huge difference between sharing my credit card info vs sending a picture or my passport or driver’s license. I’m not comfortable with the latter. I just don’t trust what they can do with it.
Thanks for this. Buying Monero without KYC seems very complicated.
Robosats was one of the sites recommended on the link you provided, but it doesn’t support Cake Wallet or Monero.com. Moreover, it requires that you have bitcoins (sats?) to serve as deposit.
I was looking forward to buying Monero with an Amazon gift card, but that is clearly not going to happen.
Just as an update. So far, I haven’t been able to find a solution. All this makes me wonder how Henry & Jonah did it? Also, this makes me wonder, why are people in the privacy community comfortable providing KYC in the form of photo ID to buy Monero or use Privacy.com for that matter?
Because they already shifting trust from the original providers in name of Security in addition to most governments making buying Monero More Tedious to prevent Anti Crypto Laundering
Can you elaborate on this? I don’t understand. They are shifting trust from who exactly? AFAIK, there’s no number to call if you ever run into issues with CakeWallet or Privacy.com. Moreover, you have no idea what they do with your data. In addition, if I’m not American, I feel even less comforable having a foreign company collect that kind of data on me.
I know that Monero is considered to be a higher risk for governments, but it’s not like it’s easier to by Bitcoin without KYC.
FYI I tried to use Privacy.com to buy crypto recently and they locked my account. They unlocked it when I requested, but seems like they may prevent you from making purchases on known crypto trading platforms. Looks like the one they blocked for me was Ramp and I recall the notification saying that vendor was specifically blocked on Privacy.
Obviously can only speak for myself, but I have never obtained Monero online for this reason, only via in-person swaps (and very occasionally people just send me some lol)
Why don’t you just buy a mainstream crypto like Litecoin (or Bitcoin, but it has higher network fees) on any KYC exchange that you trust and then you withdraw it to your own (self-custody) wallet and then you swap it to Monero without KYC on an app like Cake Wallet or a website like Trocador.app? You can just swap whatever amount you need at the time and keep the rest in (e.g.) Litecoin.
The only thing anyone would know is that you bought some Litecoin and then sent it to a swapping service. The CEX (with KYC) knows who you are but not that you swapped to Monero specifically, and the non-KYC swapping service knows your Litecoin wallet address but not your identity.
Again, Litecoin is just an example. You could also buy a stablecoin like USDC in a larger amount and swap it to Monero when needed.
I ended up just going with a KYC provider because, while I have to give them personal information to them to verify my identity, they still don’t know what actual XMR transactions I’m making because Monero does such a good job at hiding that. So for me it’s a tradeoff that makes sense especially since P2P crypto trading can be so tedious.
If you go this route, make sure to purchase Monero at different times and in different amounts than where you will spend it. If you purchase $5000 of Monero at an exchange and make a $5000 purchase in Monero an hour later, those actions could potentially be correlated by an outside observer regardless of which path the Monero took. Staggering purchases and purchasing larger amounts of Monero in advance to later spend on multiple smaller transactions can avoid this pitfall.
TL;DR buy a decent amount up front in one lump transaction, and spend from that stash later. Don’t buy exact amounts of cryptocurrency as you need to spend them.
Acquiring cryptocurrencies like Monero privately can be difficult. P2P marketplaces (platforms which facilitate trades between people) are one option, though the user experience typically suffers. If using an exchange which requires KYC is acceptable for you as long as subsequent transactions can’t be traced, it’s much easier to purchase Monero on a centralized exchange or purchase Bitcoin/Litecoin from a KYC exchange which can then be swapped for Monero. Then, you can withdraw the purchased Monero to your own self-custody wallet to use privately from that point forward.
That makes sense. If you personally know people who have already bought Monero, it’s easier to ask them if you can buy directly from them, rather than go through an online marketplace.
That’s not necessarily a bad idea. But like I said, I’m a complete newbie to cryptocurrencies, so I don’t really know which exchange or crypto market to trust. I personally appreciate that PG & TechLore are so strict with their recommendations when it comes to cryptocurrencies, wallets, and exchanges.
Also, from the little that I know, and my limited experience, buying any kind of cryptocurrencies without KYC, is quite a challenge. Especially when one is a newbie and only looking to buy a very small amount for their first timem ($10-$20).