What is Monero (XMR)? Money with the curtains closed.

What is Monero? Monero (XMR) is digital cash with the curtains closed. You can send it to anyone, anywhere, in about two minutes, and the public record only proves the payment was valid. It does not show who paid, who got paid, or how much. That one difference changes what money on the internet can be.

This is the complete guide, written for people who have never touched crypto and for people who have.

Let's get started.

Think about paying with a banknote. The shop gets the money. Nobody else learns your name, your balance, or what you bought. Now think about paying with most cryptocurrencies. Every payment is written into a public book that anyone on earth can read forever. Learn one address, and you can often follow the money from there.

Monero brings the banknote feeling online. It still keeps a shared record, a blockchain, so nobody can spend the same coin twice or create coins out of thin air. But the entries are written so that only the people involved can read them. Everyone else sees that valid payments happened, and nothing more.

Where it came from

Monero launched in April 2014, building on the CryptoNote technology first used by an earlier coin called Bytecoin. The name means "coin" in Esperanto, and the ticker is XMR. There was no company and no sale to investors. Since then it has been built in the open by volunteers, researchers and developers, and its source code is public for anyone to inspect.

Launched

2014

Per block

~2 min

Possible signers per payment

16

Block reward, forever

0.6 XMR

Privacy

Always on

Monero is money, so people use it for what money is for. The difference is who gets to watch. Here is what that privacy is good for in everyday life:

• Keep savings privateNobody who learns your address can look up your balance or your history.
• Get paid without a public client listFreelancers and shops accept payments without publishing who paid them, or how much.
• Donate without being watchedSupport journalists, activists or open-source projects without landing on a public list.
• Send money across bordersPay anyone, anywhere, in about two minutes, any day of the year, for a small network fee.
• Pay where it is acceptedSome merchants and online services take XMR directly. Others use payment processors.
• Stay off a thief’s radarA public balance advertises what you hold. A private one does not.

None of that is exotic. It is the privacy you already expect from cash and from your bank statement. Monero just keeps it when money moves online. When you are ready to try it, how to use Monero walks through your first payment.

Every payment has three secrets: who paid, who got paid and how much. Monero uses a different tool for each one, and it uses all three on every transaction.

Ring signatures hide who paid

When you spend, your wallet signs the payment together with 15 decoys pulled from the blockchain, for a ring of 16. Anyone can check that one member of the ring signed. Nobody can tell which one. A special tag called a key image still stops the same coin from being spent twice. The Moneropedia entry has the formal version.

Stealth addresses hide who got paid

You can share one public address with the whole world, but it never appears on the blockchain. Every payment to you lands at a brand-new one-time address that only your wallet can recognize. Two payments to the same person look completely unrelated. For separate public addresses per customer or per site, Monero also has subaddresses.

RingCT hides how much

Ring Confidential Transactions encrypt every amount while still letting the network prove that no money was created from nothing. They were introduced in January 2017 and have been mandatory for every transaction since September 2017.

And the key that only reads

Privacy does not mean secrecy from yourself or your accountant. Every wallet has a view key that shows incoming payments without being able to spend. You can share it with an auditor, or use it to watch a wallet from a second device.

A dollar bill is worth a dollar no matter whose pocket it passed through. That property is called fungibility, and most cryptocurrencies quietly lack it. On a public ledger every coin carries its full history. If a coin once touched an address someone dislikes, an exchange can freeze it, and the person who got it three payments later pays the price.

Monero coins have no visible history to judge. One XMR is interchangeable with any other XMR, which is exactly how money is supposed to work. The Monero project calls fungibility one of its core goals, and it follows directly from the three tools in chapter 3.

Short answer: the blockchain itself is very hard to trace, and the honest risks sit around it. Blockchain analysis companies advertise Monero tools, and researchers have found weaknesses in the past, which were fixed by later upgrades such as larger rings. Monero's own Research Lab publishes this work in the open.

Most real-world privacy failures happen off the chain. The fixes are simple habits:

• Mind your connection. A remote node sees your IP address. Use one you trust, run your own, or connect over Tor.
• Remember exchange records. If you bought on an exchange that verified your ID, that exchange knows what it sold you.
• Don't post what you want kept. An address or a screenshot shared publicly is public.

The next big upgrade, known as FCMP++, is designed to replace rings of 16 with proofs over the whole set of past outputs, which would make the decoy question disappear. Until it ships, rings remain the protection in use. See what FCMP++ changes for the current status.

Bitcoin proved that money could move without banks. Monero asks a second question: should everyone be able to watch it move? Ethereum added programmable money, still on a public ledger. Zcash answers the privacy question differently again.

The key difference with Zcash is default versus optional. When privacy is optional and most people skip it, the few private payments stand out. On Monero everyone hides in the same crowd. We go deeper in how Monero and Zcash compare.

Ethereum is a different kind of project: a platform for apps and tokens, where every balance and contract call is public. Monero does one job, private payments, and is built entirely around it.

Mining on ordinary computers

New XMR is created by miners, the computers that bundle transactions into blocks about every two minutes. Monero uses RandomX, an algorithm built to run well on regular processors and to resist specialized chips. The aim is to keep mining open to ordinary people rather than a few warehouse operators. If you want to try, start with our mining guide and P2Pool, a decentralized way to mine together.

A small reward that never ends

Most of Monero's supply was issued in its first years. Since June 2022 (block 2,641,623), the network has paid a fixed 0.6 XMR per block, forever. This "tail emission" keeps miners paid to secure the network even when fees are tiny, and because the reward is fixed, it adds a shrinking percentage to the supply each year.

No company in charge

No firm owns Monero, and no one can reverse a payment or freeze an account. Development is funded by donations through the Community Crowdfunding System, research happens in public, and anyone can run a Monero node to check every rule for themselves.

Monero improves through scheduled network upgrades. Each one is announced in advance, and the full schedule is public. The milestones that matter most:

1. Apr 2014
   LaunchMonero goes live, building on CryptoNote, with no company and no presale.
2. Mar 2016
   Two-minute blocksBlock time is set to about 120 seconds, where it remains today.
3. Jan 2017
   Hidden amounts arriveRingCT goes live. From September 2017 it is required for every transaction.
4. Oct 2018
   BulletproofsA new proof system makes transactions much smaller and fees much lower.
5. Nov 2019
   RandomX miningMining switches to RandomX, built for ordinary computer processors.
6. Oct 2020
   CLSAG signaturesSmaller, faster ring signatures cut transaction size again.
7. June 2022
   Tail emission beginsThe block reward settles at 0.6 XMR, permanently.
8. Aug 2022
   Rings of 16Every payment now hides among 16 possible signers. Bulletproofs+ and view tags make transactions lighter and wallet syncing faster.
9. Feb 2024
   Binance delists XMRThe largest exchange drops Monero, part of a wider wave of delistings in some regions.
10. Jan 2026
    MyMonero closesThe long-running web wallet shuts down, and phishing clones move in.
11. Next
    FCMP++A planned upgrade that would replace rings with proofs over the whole chain. No date has been set.

No. But the honest answer has two sides. Since 2024, several large exchanges have removed Monero, some worldwide and some only in certain regions. That makes it harder to buy in some places, and it is the main reason people ask.

Meanwhile the network itself has not missed a beat. Blocks keep arriving about every two minutes, the code keeps changing in public, and the FCMP++ upgrade is in public testing: its developers published a third beta test network in September 2026, with no mainnet date set as of 15 October 2026. Our guide to FCMP++ and what it changes for you tracks it. Community-funded work is listed openly on the CCS. Ways to get XMR have shifted toward peer-to-peer trades and swap services, which our buying guide covers.

Monero's cryptography has been studied and attacked in public for over a decade. The risks that actually cost people money are more ordinary:

• Fake wallet sites. Since MyMonero closed in January 2026, clones of it have been phishing for recovery words.
• Lost recovery words. There is no support desk. If your seed phrase is gone and your device fails, so is the money.
• Price swings. XMR can rise or fall quickly. This is not financial advice.

On the legal side, owning and using Monero is legal in most countries. Some regulated exchanges have delisted it in certain regions, which changes where you can buy, not whether you can hold it. Rules differ and change, so check where you live. This is general information, not legal advice.

Getting started takes three steps, in this order:

1. Get a wallet you control

   A non-custodial wallet keeps your keys on your own device. MonkStash runs in your browser with nothing to install; see the best Monero wallets for desktop, phone and hardware options.

2. Write down your 25 recovery words

   On paper, offline, somewhere safe. They are your money. Our seed phrase guide shows how to store them.

3. Get your first XMR

   Receive it from someone, or buy a small amount while you learn. Then follow how to use Monero for your first send and receive.

Ready? You can create a Monero wallet in about two minutes. Your recovery words are generated and encrypted on your device, and they never touch a server.