I first got introduced to Monero by Mental Outlaw’s videos by around late 2022. I actually first mined monero before having owned any (which is a weird flex but ok) and I must say the lack of overpowered ASICS encouraged me greatly to try to start mining. I would hate mining bitcoin on my old laptops because it’s futile against machines literally built and engineered to optimize mining. I knew I’d have a fair shot at making some pennies mining monero. And my only real competition are botnets. In the end I got around 50 cents worth of monero through mining!

Although, I would love to figure out a way to make mining more profitable. Has anyone figured out a way for beginners to optimize hash rate for XMR? I have also heard about merge-mining.

As far as using and obtaining monero, I bought Monero through Kraken. Don’t use the regular kraken site, because they’ll charge you higher (i believe it’s like 2%) fees. Go instead to, pro.kraken.com. The interface looks a lot more complicated. Figure it out and make a market order, you’ll get significantly lower fees (at around 0.5%). Or maybe even better, make a limit order, set the price you want to buy monero at like 2-3 dollars cheaper, and take advantage of monero’s volatility RNG :) Monero was bullish for the past couple days, though, so i was like fuck it i’ll make a market order i don’t care gimme my freedom cash. Also, it takes 1-2 days to withdraw your monero from kraken. Also,

USE A NON-CUSTODIAL ACCOUNT AND WITHDRAW YOUR XMR WHEN IT IS AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY.

privacy wise, i think multiple small withdrawals gives you plausible deniability that you were just transacting with monero, and not holding it all, for tax reasons. Besides, you SHOULD only ever transact with monero from your non-custodial wallet (aka, from your wallet app) to ensure you are getting the privacy benefits of monero. Transacting with monero from Kraken is stupid, since they can just associate the transaction address you gave them (if your bakery advertises “pay at <address1>” then if kraken sees a <address1> transaction they know you’re paying the crypto bakery). So, get your freedom cash earlier rather than later ^_^. Also, make a new receive address and sending your kraken monero through that

(As an alternative to the adage buy low, sell high,) Buy monero when monero is low, transact with monero when monero is high. Seriously. I bought so much cool shit with this currency. Lemme list them to you.

1. Anonymous ukraine phone number through https://stealths.net/ which you access through a proton mail account which they provide provide for you (change the passwords on those things)

2. Amazon delivery from https://monezon.com

3. Domain name from https://njal.la/

4. Monero hoodie from based.win [still haven’t received it]

I’ve also became an executor from Monezon. It’s kinda fun to handle people’s amazon orders and you get some non-kyc monero.

Overall, 10/10 community. Love this vision of a more free internet, and, eventually, free world.