On-ramping: acquiring cryptocurrency funds
Now that you have a privacy-preserving cryptocurrency wallet app and can receive funds in a privacy coin like Zcash or Monero, it’s time to start acquiring some funds. The cryptocurrency world calls this “on-ramping,” using the analogy of a highway on-ramp from one place (the fiat economy) to another (the so-called “crypto-native” economy, or whatever).
In this article
Getting paid directly in crypto
I’ll be blunt: the easiest way for many of us to start getting crypto is to just get a client or customer to pay or tip us in cryptocurrency. This is also arguably one of the most private ways because it simply avoids any interaction with the fiat economy entirely. This is of course even better and more private if we get paid with a privacy coin like Zcash or Monero and don’t have to convert, exchange, or swap the money we make into one of these privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies.
To get paid this way, find the “Receive” button in your wallet app. Every wallet app makes this button very big and clear, because everyone likes getting paid and that’s what wallet apps are for. Tap or click the Receive button and you’ll be presented with options to reveal the full address, a QR code of the address, and sometimes also other ways to share the address such as by sharing a link. (This is exactly how my own cryptocurrency tips and donation links work, by the way.)
Send the address or the generated QR code to your client or customer however you’re already talking with them. Ideally, you’re communicating over Signal Private Messenger, but it doesn’t really matter. Any method of sending them some text or an image, including email or text message, will work. Have them press the complementary “Send” button in their wallet app, enter the address you gave them, whether via copy-and-paste or by scanning the QR code you showed them, and you’ll have your money a few moments after they confirm the transaction on their side.
Zashi even has a “Request” button in its “Receive” screen that lets you enter an amount you’d like to receive and embeds this amount into a QR code that you can display, or save as an image to send. If they also have Zashi (or any other wallet app that supports Zcash QR codes), they can just scan the QR code to send you exactly that amount of money in Zcash’s cryptocurrency, called ZEC, the Zcash Electric Coin.
You can think of this “request via QR code” feature like a simplistic point-of-sale system. I love it because it’s perfect for us as providers since we’re so often interactively requesting payment from customers and clients who need things to be as easy as “scan-and-send.”
For some of us, however, getting paid directly in crypto seems like a stretch. Our clients or customers are wary of cryptocurrency, they don’t have the technical skill to do it, they have no existing cryptocurrency funds themselves, or they don’t have the same cryptocurrencies that we want to accept payments in. I’ll address all of these points in one of my other articles, “How and why to convince clients and customers to pay us in cryptocurrency” but, for now, let’s talk about on-ramping in other ways.
Converting fiat currency to cryptocurrency
If you have existing fiat currency, like US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), or whatever, the simplest way to acquire Zcash funds (“ZEC”) or Monero (“XMR”) is to buy it. This works like any other foreign currency conversion. By way of analogy, when you’re converting fiat currencies from one to another, you go to a currency exchange counter such as those that are at airports. There, you ask the person at the currency exchange service counter for an equivalent amount of the local currency given your available foreign currency.
Fiat-to-cryptocurrency conversions work just like that, except instead of going up to a physical counter, you visit the currency conversion service’s website. Many such fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchanges exist. Today, the biggest and most famous of these are Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance, all of which will convert your fiat currency to Zcash.
While this method is very easy, the downside is that in some situations, you may be asked to show your government ID to the exchange, especially if you’re trying to convert currencies in large amounts. This can be a big privacy risk if you’ve previously used that exchange’s services to make other kinds of transactions that you don’t want linked to you legal identity. In this case, consider creating a brand-new account from scratch.
The good news is that it’s in no way shady to be buying privacy coins. These are just currencies and securities like any other. But by choosing to purchase a privacy coin, once you receive your ZEC or XMR, you can move it about freely and privately. You’ve effectively freed your money.
Buy ZEC in Zashi via Coinbase
Perhaps the easiest way to convert your fiat currency to ZEC is once again to start within Zashi. Since Zashi supports both transparent (public) and shielded (private) Zcash addresses, you can convert your fiat currency into ZEC destined directly for your Zashi wallet.
At Zashi’s main screen, there’s a “More” button with an ellipsis. Tapping on it will reveal a number of additional options, one of which reads “Buy ZEC with Coinbase.” Tap that to open your Web browser to the Coinbase Onramp website, where you can pay for ZEC with your credit, debit, or other fiat electronic payment app and, once purchased, have your ZEC sent directly to your Zashi wallet.
For regulatory compliance reasons, most big exchanges don’t support Zcash’s shielded mode, which means buying ZEC with fiat currency is one of a very small number of situations in which you may need to provide your transparent address (sometimes called a “t-addr”) to the exchange to buy your ZEC. However, once purchased and sent directly to your Zashi wallet, the app will automatically shield your funds, making them private again.
💡 As of this writing (August 2025), Gemini is the one cryptocurrency exchange I’m aware of that supports Zcash’s shielded addresses, including the universal address format that Zashi uses.
It’s important to note that buying ZEC from one of these big exchanges and sending it directly to your Zashi wallet app is not the same as buying ZEC and then keeping it in the account you created at the exchange from which you bought the ZEC. By moving your funds directly from the exchange into your Zashi wallet app immediately, you are doing the equivalent of withdrawing your money from the bank so you can hold onto it (and protect it) yourself.
Buy Monero in Cake Wallet
I still need to write this section. It’s basically the same as the above; go into Cake Wallet, hit the “Buy” button, and get some XMR into your wallet via whatever exchange they support.
