Acquire and hold Monero without a trail
Monero hides the transaction. It does not hide how the coins got to you, or which address you keep handing out.
- 01
Buy where no name is attached, or break the link once
A KYC exchange knows it sold you XMR and to which address it withdrew. That is the only public edge in a Monero flow, so either buy peer-to-peer or atomic-swap from another coin, or accept the exchange edge and move the funds once through your own wallet before spending; on-chain the spend is unlinkable.
- 02
Run your own wallet, pick the node deliberately
Feather or the official GUI/CLI. The remote node you connect to sees your IP and which outputs you ask about; use your own node, Tor, or at least a node you chose rather than a default. Never paste a seed into a web page.
- 03
Never give out your primary address twice
Addresses that start with 4 are the primary. Anyone who holds it can recognise it anywhere else it appears and can see your public view key. Generate a subaddress (starts with 8) per counterparty; the inspector tells you which kind you are looking at.
- 04
Treat the view key like a password
A private view key lets its holder see every incoming payment to your wallet, forever. Share it only when you mean to prove receipt. The inspector verifies a view key against an address entirely in your browser, so you can check one before relying on it.
- 05
Mind the ten-block lock
Fresh outputs cannot be spent for about twenty minutes. If you need to pay for something at a specific moment, fund the wallet earlier. Merchants here settle on one confirmation, so paying is fast; re-spending is not.
- 06
Pay the integrated address exactly as quoted
An order gives you an integrated address and an amount whose last digits are unique to it. Your wallet tags the payment with the id; on-chain it is indistinguishable from any other transaction. Report the transaction id on the order page; the shop can only see that output, nothing about you.