How to use the Monero CLI wallet

Requirements

A computer (Windows, Mac or Linux)
Some basic command line comfort

In this guide I will be showing you how to use it on Linux mostly, since that is where most people use it.

Download and install

You can download the cli from the official website getmonero.org/downloads Choose the one for your operating system.

After it has downloaded extract it

On Linux simply run:

tar -xvjf monero-linux*.tar.bz2

Now that it has been extracted simply cd into it

cd monero*

Using

1. Creating a New Wallet

The first thing we will have to do is create a new wallet. Simply run

./monero-wallet-cli

You should now see something like this:

Enter a wallet file name. I will enter main for example. After that confirm the creation of that wallet.

After that you will be prompted to enter a new password for the wallet. Use something secure, but remember it.

Confirm the password. After that you should select the language of your seed. Just choose English for simplicity.

Now you will see something like this:

It is extremely important that you BACKUP this seedphrase without it you will loose access to your funds.

After that select whether or not you want to mine (most probably no).

After that you can enter welcome (type welcome and hit enter) in order to get some more info

Basic commands

Initially, unless you are running a node on your computer you will have to use a remote node. To do that you will have to run this command

./monero-wallet-cli --daemon-address NODEADDRESS

You can find a full list of monero nodes at monero.fail

For example

./monero-wallet-cli --daemon-address node.sethforprivacy.com:18089

After running the command you will see something like this

It will show you your full balance etc.

We will now be going over the most essential commands

Balance

In order to get your balance all you have to do is run

balance

You should see something like this:

[wallet 43LSEb]: balance
Currently selected account: [0] Primary account
Tag: (No tag assigned)
Balance: 0.000000000000, unlocked balance: 0.000000000000

Address

In order to display the primary receiving address run

address

You should see something like this:

[wallet 43LSEb]: address
0  43LSEbXqZ2hjhrogZsSZ9TKnDSKLxueyY2kUyUwJfHh2L5bJjX3KLeWdD4A6XEsJ8QNqspfmDk5qVdj5QmDPyAPvEmbuZ7W  Primary address

In order to generate a new subaddress you can run

address new

Output:

[wallet 43LSEb]: address new
1  85TT84Ma6yTXzrcz5yfFpBWYgf4guCzdHE1ip4jwomxV6KV5BB2qqyyQtfPXn2YWThC4YrRVUDrgxj3niZrKtQa377J6odA  (Untitled address)

Sending

In order to send monero we use the transfer command

The syntax is

transfer <address> <amount>

For example transfer 888tNkZrPN6JsEgekjMnABU4TBzc2Dt29EPAvkRxbANsAnjyPbb3iQ1YBRk1UXcdRsiKc9dhwMVgN5S9cQUiyoogDavup3H 1

This will transfer 1 XMR to the address of the CCS.

Refresh

In order to see new incoming transactions you can run

refresh

Output:

[wallet 43LSEb]: refresh
Starting refresh...
Refresh done, blocks received: 0                                
Currently selected account: [0] Primary account
Tag: (No tag assigned)
Balance: 0.000000000000, unlocked balance: 0.000000000000

Incoming transactions

In order to see incoming transactions we use the incoming_transfers command

To see incoming transactions that are available to spend you may use incoming_transfers available

Save & Exit

When exiting the wallet first enter save in order to not loose any recent transactions or changes

Then type exit to safely exit

Conclusion

And that’s about it. The monero wallet cli is an extremely well developed solution suitable for advanced users. While it is not for everyone if you enjoy using the command line, it’s amazing!

This article was written by 4rkal part of the CypherGoat.com open source instant exchange aggregator team!

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