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Comment by norcux | Hacker News Reader

Who said Bitcoin is anonymous?

There is no such thing as an anonymous transaction, for a fully informed definition of anonymous.

Bitcoin isn't... neither is cash in hand. Neither is a drop. Someone knows.

A discussion of 'anonymity' in this context is one of increasing the difficulty of discovery, not thinking that the discovery is impossible. If a major world government is after you, good luck with "anonymous"

Monero is.

You could convert Monero ou Zcash to Bitcoin at an exchange before paying. I don't know which exchanges currently allow to do that without verifying your identity, though.

So you think if a notorious terrorist or whatever moved millions of dollars through Monero to fund a terror attack, American or other intelligence agencies wouldn't be able to identify the transaction?

It could be done truly anonymously when up against the full weight and might of US, Western, Israeli etc intelligence budgets and methods?

Well the sender, receiver and the amounts are all hidden, so yes.

I should still note that it isn't a magic bullet, and that things you do in connection to the monero blockchain can obviously still give the authorities an idea of what you are doing.

Would it still be hidden if a government identified servers hosting the network, seized them and forensically analyzed them including having access to potential zero days in encryption tools, backdoors in algorithms, and supercomputers?

Etc etc. My point is that anonymous is an ideal, not a absolutist reality.

Doesn't Monero focus on differential privacy? Meaning you have plausible deniability not anonymity. Where as something like ZCash you have to trust the seed. Did things change?

If you can acquire BTC anonymously, then you can pay anonymously.

If you can acquire BTC anonymously, then you can acquire prepaid virtual credit cards anonymously. Most localbitcoins exchangers will happily do bank transfers for you without asking any questions either.

There's not many kinds of payments which aren't fairly easy to do anonymously.

Any recommendation on prepaid virtual credit cards which are accepted in EU?

Sorry, I have none. I never bothered to try acquiring de-personalised crypto, as I never needed any. The VCC idea sounds neat, but it's practically transparent for state actors. I think the easiest and safest option is directly exchanging cash for crypto at a crypto-ATM, if you can find any where you live. Downsides, you usually get a relatively bad exchange rate and they are often hard to find, if not forbidden. Or you buy privately, preferably from someone you trust not to cheat you, but you'd first have to find that person. The next-best thing might be to buy a relatively private coin like ZCash or Monero and exchange that for whatever else. But don't take that as advice, I'm not an expert. It's probably best you do your own digging.

Ezzocard has many. Exchange rates are bad, but it's a small price to pay for privacy.

These guys must be making insane amounts of money, would love to build a competitor.

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