What Is Cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is a type of digital currency which allows money to be sent without the need for banks and middlemen. It uses a variety of mathematical “proofs” to prevent someone spending the same money in two places at once.
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and it achieved this goal by displaying every transaction in public, forever.
Bitcoin is sent from one “address” to another. Addresses are not supposed to be linked to a person’s name but often people must give their ID to a currency exchange to buy Bitcoin and if hackers or other bad people access this information then they can link the transactions back to the person’s ID very easily.
This is also a problem if a piece of bitcoin is linked to hacking or other crime as it means that exchanges can freeze a person’s account when they try to convert the piece into another currency. This can happen even if the person is not related to the hacking in any way and is several degrees of separation from the perpetrators.
What is Monero?
Monero is a slightly newer currency (2014 vs 2010) which has been designed with privacy and security in mind from day one, learning from the challenges that Bitcoin has experienced. Monero transactions cannot be linked from account to account and even the amounts sent are hidden from public view. It uses a number of modern mathematical approaches to keep information truly private.
We know that the convenience of card payments is hard to beat and Bitcoin is more established but we believe in an age where our every move is increasingly tracked to sell us more products and make sure we are behaving “correctly”, it is important for us to avoid making our financial history available for anyone with access to the master password.
How can I use Cryptocurrencies?
You only need to convert as much as you need to spend as you can buy small fractions of any currency.
Monero is a few years younger than Bitcoin and its accessibility is a little lower, like bitcoin was previously. There are still many places to buy it using your national currency or with bitcoin. As soon as bitcoin is changed into monero and stored on your own computer or a site which doesn’t keep your ID, it is private and secure.
Localmonero.co and Kraken.com are our recommended ways to buy monero. Bisq is superb, especially if you already own Bitcoin as no ID is required.
reddit.com/r/XMRtrader is a large community with more information about buying Monero.
