How would I purchase Bitcoin anonymously? I can't, because there is no way to exchange my cash for (significant) amount of Bitcoin. If I can't get Bitcoin anonymously, how is the promise of crypto still valid for newcomers?
The promise of Bitcoin was never "You are able to be anonymous" since one of the core features of it is a distributed public ledger of all transactions on the network. It goes against the fundamental idea of Bitcoin, that everything is public.
Other cryptocurrencies have made "You are able to be anonymous" a core feature in their protocols, see zCash or Monero for example. But most cryptocurrencies go with how Bitcoin implemented things, meaning everything is public.
One of the core value propositions of Bitcoin (and most cryptocurrencies) has always been "If you own the keys and can connect to the network, no one can stop you from making a transaction".
Anonymous doesn't mean invisible, it means without connection to an identity.
The only identity that you have on chain is an address, which most people would consider equivalent to anonymity.
Offchain.
> companies like chiphertrace actively tracking them
Mostly without attribution, which people would consider anonymous.
If that identity belongs to your ISP or a VPN or something else is irrelevant, as that would be anonymity on the IP level rather than the level of the Bitcoin protocol.
Have you done this? You know of anyone who have done this? I know in theory it's possible to do, but claiming it's "feasible" I'm not sure is accurate.
> broadcast through a remote node
Which requires you to connect to the remote node, again using the traditional TCP/IP stack.
> overlay network gateway through TOR, I2P
Yeah, that would mask your IP, but IP still required, meaning your anonymous on the IP level, just like I argued in my previous comment.
While the context might have been lost these deep in the thread, I was simply trying to rebut "If I can't get Bitcoin anonymously, how is the promise of crypto still valid?" which WA wrote earlier.
You can work and get paid in bitcoin.
You can sell stuff for bitcoin.
You can mine bitcoin.
If you want something, you will find a way.
Where can I buy 500,000€ worth of Bitcoin with cash?
> You can work and get paid in bitcoin.
That's usually not anonymous.
> You can sell stuff for bitcoin.
I don't own stuff worth 500,000€, except cash and stocks.
> You can mine bitcoin.
Not in a significant way, no.
> If you want something, you will find a way.
You ran out of arguments. My point still holds: Crypto isn't anonymous, because you can't easily get in and out of it anonymously.
Practically, there are a ton of ways to turn 500,000 EUR into "anonymous" crypto, depending on what you mean by "anonymous".
You can use an exchange (KYC or non-KYC) that lets you trade USDT/XMR pairs. Wire 500,000 EUR and convert to USDT. Buy the full amount worth of XMR and send it to your own XMR hardware wallet. You now have anonymous XMR (assuming you trust their math).
You can do something similar with ZEC shielded transactions. Many KYC exchanges support ZEC (but without shielded transactions). You can get your ZEC this way and then shield it.
If you're interested in anonymous crypto, XMR or ZEC is probably what you'd want to have anyway instead of BTC.
Also, LTC recently adopted a new privacy-enabling feature. It's not functional yet as far as I know, but it did cause LTC to be delisted from several korean exchanges last week. This one is interesting because of the widespread adoption of litecoin before it added privacy features.
Or if you'd rather use the ETH ecosystem, you can use https://tornado.cash/. Buy your KYC'd ETH, send to tornado.cash, wait, withdraw a partial amount to a fresh anonymous ethereum address.
There are even privacy-oriented wallets like https://unstoppable.money/ that can use tor to further improve anonymity while doing wallet actions.
But let's say you really do want bitcoin only. Take your 500,000 EUR and wire it to a KYC exchange. Buy your bitcoin and send it to your wallet. Send that BTC into renVM pools, wait, send your renBTC to a new address, release renBTC back to BTC on the new address: https://bridge.renproject.io/.
In other words, your point does not hold at all. There are probably a dozen different ways to get anonymous crypto right now. In the near future, many common coins will have privacy features anyway, maybe even by default.
You have to think about what level of anonymity you want and what premium you're willing to pay, but there's a wide spectrum of options.
And if you think it's not easy enough yet, just wait. The math works, it's just not wrapped up into a convenient user experience yet.
That goes waayyy beyond "not wrapped up in a convenient user experience". Talking of finances is not so trivial a proposition as... Well, anything else that might have started our complicated on the internet.
Surely there is better criticism than, "stop being so thorough"?
I suppose if you really want to have 500k in anonymous crypto (one way to do it):
1. Buy it in BTC. 2. Exchange it for XMR. 3. ... 4. Profit!
Funny thing is, as a EU foreigner in Spain I can legally withdraw/buy up to 10.000€ per day in BTC anonymously, while a spanish citizen is limited to 1.000€ (I've used BTC ATMs on occasions in Spain, which is completely anonymous below that threshold).
I don’t live in a lawless third-world country. It’s very modern and safe here. Statistically safer than the US and other superpower countries.
It’s not fair to count your own country’s unfair regulations as a negative against Bitcoin itself.
Of course it's probably easier here than other places because we already have an extremely strong culture of purchasing US Dollars bills face to face under the table.
its clunky but i actually think this is a pretty fun on ramp. im all for people getting paid crypto as a way in rather than buying it.