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Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

>Now it’s easy to purchase bitcoins on any number of mainstream markets and “tumble” them so that their point of purchase is obscured. Similarly, thanks to Tor, accessing the dark web requires only opening a browser and enduring slower download speeds.

lol has the author tried buying bitcoins and then tumbling them? I would not call submitting tons of ID to buy and withdrawal $5000 of bitcoin and then setting up tor and getting a tumbler working to be easy, and not getting scammed in the process. Also tor and tumblers are not necessarily fully anonymous.

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>Also tor and tumblers are not necessarily fully anonymous

Money quote right there.

I'm not sure how many people consider using this sort of thing to skirt the law. But believing in the anonymity of anything on the internet while you're skirting the law has landed many a naive person in prison. Especially if that person was within the jurisdictional reach of the US government.

Bitcoin Fog did pretty well during its run. It mixed Bitcoin from at least two huge thefts. At least one of them generated a huge Reddit crowd-sourced tracking effort. And as far as I know, nothing was ever tracked.

I do get that Monero is ~anonymous by design.

But then, how does one buy it anonymously? All I see are exchanges that implement KYC. Using bank transfers and credit/debit cards. Are there any cash by mail exchanges? Or even local meatspace exchanging?

There are atm machines popping up where you can go and deposit cash to get btc. They typically have phone number requirements for transactions under $3000 (over requires ID) and they are located in places with cameras (e.g. gas stations/convenience stores), but those restrictions are easily worked around (burner phone/pay a homeless person/disguise) if you have the desire.

localbitcoins.com

have these people not heard of monero?

In Canada you can buy btc in cash at any post office without ID.

How?

They appear to have an ID verification program Bitcoin exchanges are using (https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/business/postal-services/di...) but I'm unable to Google up how you'd buy BTC there.

There's a service where you pay to have money put onto a "gift card" that has a QR code. Scan the QR code and the funds get sent to your Kraken account.

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