> I take it that a person just finds a few random strangers' public keys with previous history. The ring signatures are used when spending an output. For minti

> I take it that a person just finds a few random strangers' public keys with previous history. The ring signatures are used when spending an output. For minting an output you essentially just spend to a single public key. When spending an output, you pick 10 other outputs (at random from an age-based distribution so the age of a ring-member does not say much) and you produce a ring-signature saying "I have the key to one of these 11 outputs". They combine this with Pedersen commitments to ensure that you are not spending more than you are minting, without ever revealing the total amount of the transaction. In older versions of Monero, you would pick a few (rings were smaller then) outputs of the same amount, and the amounts were hidden.