How to buy Nano without KYC?

Introduction

Buying crypto directly from centralized KYC exchanges like Binance is (almost) easy. The only problem is that exchanges need to have KYC verification - it's a pain in the ass that only makes your life harder - it invades our privacy and makes life harder for people that are for example underage. Unfortunately, buying XNO without KYC is more difficult - but with limits and effort it's still possible - here's how.

But what is KYC and why it's bad?

KYC stands for "know your customer." In theory, it's a process that should protect companies from illegal activities, fraud, money laundering, etc. Exchanges are mainly required by law to implement KYC. In practice, however, KYC doesn't work. Criminals know how to avoid it. Cryptocurrencies are intended to be used without barriers, and such policies only damage our privacy. Giving our personal info to third parties is not safe either - over the past few years 600k people had their personal info leaked.

How to buy XNO without KYC?

You can't buy XNO for fiat directly - it's mostly because of a small community, but there are still ways to deal with it that I'm going to show you.

P2P

An obvious one, I'm just gonna leave it for clarity. You need to find some guy (tons of them are on for example discord) that will send you XNO for fiat with some extra fee. It may be the most "profitable" way to buy it - for you and the seller, but it has two big cons:

1. Finding a trustworthy guy is hard and risky.
2. Even the most trustworthy guy may scam you after some time working with you.

Using KYC-less exchanges

They aren't (mostly) typical exchanges - they're often p2p and decentralized. There is only one problem, every one of these exchanges I listed below doesn't support XNO directly - but it's easy to fix.

Haveno

It's a non-custodial decentralized exchange. It's built on Monero and Tor - a privacy dreamland. You'll get Monero for Fiat from here, and I'll show you how to swap it to XNO later. There are multiple networks for Haveno, so you need to choose a provider and rely on this network. It has one thing that may be considered a con - you'll need to install it. But it is still a better choice than the next ones because money is cheap. This guide will show you how to use it.

Bisq

Another non-custodial decentralized exchange - you need to install it too. It's built on (in this case, unfortunately) bitcoin. You can buy altcoins but Bitcoin still needs to be a part of the transaction so you'll lose some money later on fee. Check this guide to set this up.

Peach

Another safe non-custodial peer-to-peer exchange is a mobile app. It's built unfortunately on Bitcoin, so you'll lose some money on fees.

There are more of these - none of them is perfect. You can find more exchanges like this here. Personally, I would try to find an order on Haveno because it's the cheapest one.

I've got crypto, how to swap it for XNO?

You can use crypto swaps like Nanswap, they're simple and have XNO support. If you want to use another swap you can check Simpleswap or Changelly.

Is buying Nano without KYC simple enough?

No, it's not easy enough, and in the future, it will be only harder. The cheapest way is finding someone who will do p2p trades, but it requires trust. Using decentralized p2p exchanges is expensive (especially on Bitcoin), and swaps have their own fee too. But it's still a fight for privacy, and in the future, it may be worth the hassle. But still the best thing you can do is earn XNO and spend it like currency - not investment.