If you already have other cryptocurrency, it’s not difficult to swap them for Monero. You have two options:
You use a big, sometimes regulated company that lets you buy or sell one coin for another.
The downside is that it will probably require KYC, which means Know Your Customer. They ask for your passport or ID to check your identity. In this case you’re telling them who you are, how much crypto you have, how much you exchanged, and where you want to withdrawal to. A good thing is that once you do, Monero has your back and your future activity is protected from surveillance, but you already lost the deniability of you ever buying Monero in the first place. Some options:
| Exchange | Funded | Based in |
|---|---|---|
| kraken.com | 2011 | United States |
| bitfinex.com | 2012 | British Virgin Islands |
| kucoin.com | 2017 | Seychelles |
| tradeogre.com | 2018 | Who knows? |
They all work the same way. You transfer coins to the exchange, then you look for a pair that includes XMR, like BTC/XMR for example. You then create an order to swap your coin for either XMR directly, or you swap it first for a coin that has a XMR pair, like BTC or USDT and then swap that for XMR.
Once you do it and you have XMR in your balance, you need to withdraw. The exchange will ask for a wallet to send the moneros to. Done.
You use a smaller provider that allows you to swap cryptocurrencies without asking for any identification.
This is riskier in the sense that some of those companies are run by anonymous people, so you cannot hold anyone accountable in case something goes wrong. But for small enough amounts they’re an almost perfect solution.
There are a lot of them and they open and close all the time. Your best option is visiting sites that add them together and rank or compare according to different aspects, like how private they are, or how they deal with problems. Sites like kycnot.me, Trocador, or orangefren do that. Remember, they don’t trade you the coins themselves, the trades are made by services like eXch, Exolix, ChangeNOW, Majestic Bank, or others. Some of them have been around for some time, some eventually drop Monero, so you’ll have to test and see for yourself.