is a cryptocurrency, that is
- private: transactions and wallet balances are not publicly visible on the blockchain
- untraceable: it's ambiguous which funds have been spent, and thus extremely unlikely that a transaction could be linked to particular user
Buy it with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency on shapeshift.io or other cryptocurrency exchange.
Generating a unique address for each transaction is not necessary, you can have just one, like a bank account. You can generate a paper wallet on moneroaddress.org, mymonero.com, or using the software as described below.
A wallet has a public address, a mnemonic seed, and a pair of keys - spend key and view key. All keys can be recovered from the mnemonic seed, so that's the only part that needs to be stored safely (or remembered).
mymonero.com can be used, but doing it on command line is more fun:
(on macOS, using Homebrew)
A wallet program and a program running the Monero blockchain are needed. For some uses wallet program is enough, but not for making transactions or checking the balance.
- download the client here
$ monerod- starts running the blockchain$ monero-wallet-cli- starts wallet program, without any flags it will generate a new wallet
$ monerod- starts running the blockchain, then in separate window:$ monero-wallet-cli --wallet-file <filename>
Once in wallet program, run balance or refresh.
sources