How to swap BTC to XMR: a step-by-step guide
NoxSwap Team
To swap BTC to XMR, you need a Monero wallet address, a Bitcoin refund address and about half an hour. On NoxSwap you pick BTC and XMR, see one guaranteed amount of Monero, send the exact Bitcoin amount and receive XMR straight to your wallet, with no account and no registration. Below is the full process, the wallets worth using, and the details that trip people up: address formats, confirmation times and what Monero's privacy actually covers.
Pick a Monero wallet first
The swap pays out to a Monero address you control, so set up the wallet before anything else. Cake Wallet runs on iOS, Android and desktop and is the easiest start. Feather is a light, fast desktop wallet for Windows, macOS and Linux. The official Monero GUI and CLI wallets from getmonero.org can run your own node, which gives you the most independence.
For larger balances, a hardware wallet keeps the keys offline. Ledger and Trezor devices support Monero when used together with a compatible desktop wallet such as the Monero GUI. Whatever you choose, write down the seed phrase on paper and store it safely before you receive anything.
Receiving to your own wallet rather than an exchange account is the cleaner route anyway. Several large exchanges have delisted Monero in recent years, and some custodial platforms delay or refuse credits from third parties.
Know what a Monero address looks like
A standard Monero address starts with 4 and is 95 characters long. Subaddresses, which most wallets create for each new receive request, start with 8. Both work for a swap payout, and using a fresh subaddress for each swap is good practice because it keeps your incoming payments separate in your own records.
Normal wallets don't need a payment ID. Payment IDs are a legacy feature, and integrated addresses, which also start with 4 but are longer, only matter when an exchange or merchant explicitly gives you one. After pasting any address, compare the first and last few characters with the original: clipboard malware that swaps addresses is a real threat.
Step by step on NoxSwap
Start on the homepage. Choose BTC as the coin you send and XMR as the coin you receive, then enter the amount of Bitcoin. The widget shows one number: the guaranteed amount of Monero that will arrive, with the exchange fee and network fees already included. The rate stays locked for the countdown shown under the quote.
Continue and paste your XMR address. Then add a refund address. It must be a BTC address from a wallet you control, not a Monero address and not an exchange deposit address, because that is where your Bitcoin goes back if the swap can't be completed. An e-mail address is optional and only used for updates about this order.
Finally, send exactly the displayed BTC amount to the deposit address within the window shown on the order page, typically about 10 minutes. The page updates by itself from Waiting for deposit through Confirming, Exchanging and Sending to you, and lists the deposit and payout hashes with explorer links. Save the order ID that starts with nx_ or bookmark the page: it is your only key to the order.
How long it takes
Most of the time goes on Bitcoin. Your deposit needs network confirmations before the exchange is executed, usually 1 to 2 blocks, which is often 10 to 30 minutes and longer when the mempool is busy and your fee was low. Send with a normal or priority fee rather than the cheapest setting. If you send from an exchange, make sure the withdrawal leaves on the Bitcoin network itself and not via Lightning, which NoxSwap does not support, and that the amount arriving after the withdrawal fee is exactly the quoted one.
On the Monero side, the payout shows up in your wallet soon after it is sent, but Monero requires 10 confirmations, about 20 minutes, before received funds become spendable. Until then your wallet shows them as locked. That is normal and has nothing to do with the swap. All in all, plan for 30 to 60 minutes from sending BTC to having spendable XMR.
Why the fixed rate matters for this pair
Between your Bitcoin transaction and the Monero payout there can be half an hour of market movement. With a floating rate you carry that risk yourself. With NoxSwap's fixed rate, the quoted XMR amount is the one delivered, as long as the exact BTC amount arrives within the window.
If a different amount arrives, or it arrives after the window, the quote no longer applies: the executing partner either recalculates at the current market rate or refunds your BTC to the refund address, minus network fees. The order page tells you which of the two happened.
What Monero's privacy factually means
On the Monero blockchain, amounts, senders and receivers are hidden by default. Ring signatures mix the inputs of your transaction with decoys, stealth addresses give every payment a one-time destination, and RingCT conceals the amount. Someone reading the chain cannot see your balance or link your payout address to your other payments the way they can on Bitcoin.
That is a property of the Monero chain, not a promise about everything around it. Your Bitcoin deposit stays visible on Bitcoin's public ledger, any exchange you use keeps its own records, and your view key reveals incoming payments to anyone you share it with. On our side, standard swaps need no account and no KYC, the payout comes from a fresh address, and we keep only the order data needed to run and support the swap. Large or flagged transactions, about 0.5% of all, can be selected by the executing partner for an additional AML check.
Common mistakes on BTC to XMR
The usual ones are avoidable. Pasting a Bitcoin address into the XMR field, or an XMR address as the BTC refund address, is caught by address validation when the order is created. What validation can't catch is a different amount than quoted, which happens easily when an exchange deducts its withdrawal fee, or a deposit sent after the window closed.
Keep the swap and the wallet apart in your head, too. If your XMR shows as locked, wait for the 10 confirmations instead of contacting anyone. And if a supposed support agent messages you first on Telegram, it is not us: NoxSwap never writes first and never asks for a seed phrase.