What is Monero (XMR)?

Monero is a cryptocurrency built for privacy. Unlike Bitcoin, where every payment is public, Monero hides who sent a payment, who received it and how much moved. It does this for every transaction, not as an option.

Where it came from

The Monero blockchain has been running since 18 April 2014. Its software is open source.

How it works

Lesson 34 shows how anyone can follow a Bitcoin payment on a block explorer. Monero is designed so that this is not possible. It uses three techniques together:

• Ring signatures mix the real sender with 15 decoys, so an observer cannot tell which of the 16 actually paid.
• Stealth addresses give the receiver a fresh one-time address for each payment, so payments cannot be linked to a published address.
• Ring confidential transactions hide the amount.

Monero's own documentation describes the protection for receivers and amounts as strong, and for senders as "plausible deniability". It also notes that a wallet connected to someone else's node does not hide your internet address unless you use a privacy network such as Tor.

New blocks are added by mining, as on Bitcoin (Lesson 4). Monero uses an algorithm called RandomX, designed for ordinary computer processors rather than specialist machines. A block arrives about every two minutes.

Supply

Monero has no fixed maximum.

• The main issuance produced about 18.1 million XMR by the end of May 2022.
• Since then, a permanent "tail emission" adds 0.6 XMR per block, forever. That is under 1% a year, and the rate falls as the supply grows.

The tail emission exists so that miners are always paid to secure the network, not only through fees.

What people use it for

People use Monero for payments they want to keep private, and they hold and trade it like other coins.

Risks to know

• Exchanges may not carry it. Binance removed Monero on 20 February 2024 after a review. That can make it harder to buy, sell or cash out.
• Mining attacks. In mid-2025, a project called Qubic paid miners to point their computers at Monero and announced a plan to control a majority of its mining. In August 2025 the network saw a six-block reorganisation, which rewrote about 12 minutes of recent history. A majority of mining would let an attacker reverse recent payments.
• Privacy has limits. Sender privacy rests on decoys, and your internet connection can still reveal you without extra steps.
• Records still matter. Private payments are still taxable where crypto is taxed. Lesson 59 covers record keeping.

Learn more

Lesson 4 explains mining, Lesson 22 covers keys and addresses, and the Zcash guide describes a different approach to private payments.