As a disclaimer, I personally hold various amounts in all the top privacy coins, including Monero, as I'm engaged in testing the coins and wallets. My company has also acquired some amount of privacy coins as part of a marketing effort to give away many of them to Brighteon.com users who enable crypto tipping on their accounts. (See this story for a full explanation.)
For many people, acquiring crypto through centralized exchanges is cumbersome. Most exchanges also require KYC (Know Your Customer) documentation that feels very invasive. In most exchanges, you need to take selfie photos, provide copies of a passport, driver's license, bank statements and other items. This often feels like a gross violation of privacy.
Decentralized exchanges like LocalMonero (and AgoraDesk.com for Bitcoin) allow people to acquire crypto directly from other people. Sellers create Craigslist-like listings, offering Monero at various rates, based on different forms of payment such as Zelle, Xoom, debit cards, wire transfers or even cash in the mail. (Cash in the mail actually gets you the best exchange rates.)
Each seller decides what sort of ID they might require from buyers. At better exchange rates, expect sellers to engage in more vetting of who's buying from them. Both buyers and sellers build up reputation scores on the platform, and those reputation scores help sellers decide who they are willing to sell to. As a buyer, if you don't want to provide any details about yourself, expect to pay much higher rates, as sellers face a tremendous amount of fraud risk due to the fact that buyers are always trying to scam sellers by using reversible payment methods in fiat. For example, buyers can send a Zelle payment and then later claim it was fraud, and the bank will often reverse the transaction. But the crypto has already been sent and isn't reversible, so the Monero seller eats the loss.
This is why sellers charge higher rates, especially for buyers who don't have established reputation scores.
You can also use crypto to buy Monero on LocalMonero, and this is actually the easiest form of trade (Bitcoin to Monero, typically). These are fast, efficient and require little or no KYC. Then again, if you don't already have Bitcoin, then you still face the problem of acquiring Bitcoin in the first place. If you do have Bitcoin, then engaging in cryptocurrency trades on LocalMonero is the fastest way to build your reputation score there.
Learn more in the full, detailed interview below. It's episode 3 of Decentralize.TV. See all future episodes -- and join the email alert list -- at Decentralize.TV. See the official channel for Decentralize TV videos at this link on Brighteon.com: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/decentralizetv
Episodes are also available on Rumble at: https://rumble.com/c/decentralizeTV
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