No no no. It should be or bought or mined. You cant get it any other way.   But emission schedule is set so it is cheap to mine or buy. With time it will get more scarce and price will go up.  But now Monero is not even 3 years old. So must be still cheap!!!


Well other option is that someone gave you coins for free. But who would do that and why?  They or bought them or mined at $1-10$ price.  It is not like in some cases where some mined in one day 2,000.000 coins and latter in 3 years stacked another 4,000.000 coins with those initial 2 milions. It cost them only one day of electricity to have now 6,000.000.  Those people can easily give their coins to you for free. They got them free themselves.