Bitcoin Forum

I have one wallet with some bitcoins. If bitcoin continues to grow in value (think 100k - 1000k) that wallet will be very valueable.
1. How do I sell my bitcoins without any noticeing my wallet and who I am? Should I always use a vpn when sending a transaction?
2. Is there criminals that searching in blockexplorer (or in another way) to find a wallet like mine and then searches up those ppls in the real world and threats them to their life?
3. How do I best sell / splits up my wallet
4. Can I trust the exchanges? They have my personal information.

People can't trace you personally through the blockchain. Your transactions don't have a nametag on them. Nobody will come and threaten you.

The safest way if you want to avoid KYC is to trade on decentralized exchanges or in person. You can also use an ATM to withdraw bitcoin anonymously.

I can't tell you if you can trust exchanges to hold your data private but you can trust them to send you the money if you use a big one like coinbase. They won't scam you but you won't avoid KYC if you use them.

1. Sending transactions while using VPN/Tor is a good idea, because it will prevent adversaries from linking your IP address to your coins.

2. It can happen, people can leave their addresses on forums and social media, and even one address can be linked to other addresses if you are not careful.

4. Using exchange will have much smaller risk of getting scammed/robbed than a p2p trade, but it's bad for your privacy, especially if an exchange requires KYC. I don't think that they sell data to criminals, but if an exchange gets hacked, personal data can be stolen too. Exchanges share customer data with officials though, so you'll have to pay your taxes.

The best thing you can do is splitting your coins on different addresses. before you do this you can use a mixer. its always better when you sell some coins and the other one knows your identity. just imagine someone buys 0.1 bitcoin and sees you have 8 btc left on this address... so 1.) make sure no one gets your identity or 2 as already said, split you coins on different addresses.

I agree. Make other account, do not link on your main account, which you can use for your different transactions. That would be safer though every transactions is anonymous unless there is a request for KYC that ask for your personal info. Be careful of the site you are using because some are just phishing.

1. Use change addresses every time you make a transaction. This somewhat dilutes the trail and uses a different 'starting point' on your transactions everytime and not just the same address you have used for the previous tranaactions.
2. There are, though I don't think they'd be interested in low volume/weight addresses. Even then, there's still no correlation between IP addresses and transactions, so you're safe.
3. Refer to number 1.
4. Yes and no. You can trust them to facilitate the trades however you don't know if they're using your docs for something else. Just don't leave lots of money on exchanges and you'll be fine.

Samourai wallet have nice features for keeping your BTC and your privacy.
https://samouraiwallet.com/

Just check the features
https://samouraiwallet.com/features



1. use Bisq exchange  https://bisq.network/
2. Yes. Do not talk in public how much BTC you have .
3. Best not to move BTC, if you want to keep it.
4. Not for keeping BTC, only for trading.

it depends on the type of wallet you are using!
if it is a full node then using VPNs and TOR are good options for increasing your privacy but if it is an SPV wallet, a web wallet or worse of all a custodial wallet then your privacy is reduced in order of the types i listed here. hiding your IP doesn't do you much.

they have to be able to link the "coins" to the person. as long as you are not advertising your identity online and not linking it to your address you could be fine.

sell on exchanges, and if you have large amounts split it among multiple addresses (like 10BTC per address).
if you decided to sell face to face then make sure to do it in a public place and bring someone with you as "bodyguard"!

not so much. they are hacked all the time and some of them are shady enough to sell your information online! specially the big altcoin exchanges.

1. I think you should make a research about DEX! You can trade your money in DEX with privacy. And you always buy or sell BTC's P2P.


2) There is no legal instruments about it. There is no one also restric about it. Blockexplorer, always will be transparent and everyone can see all transaction freely.

3) You may look for mixer application. Or swap things. It is easy to use when you are keeping your privacy.

4) Its all up to you. There were so many examples what blown up exchanges. (for example you should look for mt gox issue).

You post remind me old time MEW's warning.
https://i.imgur.com/aoP1DHe.jpg
Your coins will be worth million dollar maybe...

Can be done! Use TOR browser if possible. This way you will de-link your wallet and IP address!


Not possible! They can find the wallet but can't find your personal information this way or any other information about the user of the wallet until you explicitly take the ownership. 


I recommend to use a third party wallet like Electrum or Greenwallet or coinbase to keep some running funds into it for your trading activities! The amount should not be very huge and just to fulfill your trading desire. 

regulated exchanges like Binance can be trusted until a hacker attack revels the details of the user information. Or else, use Decentralized exchanges. There are many DEX available and I won't recommend any particular name, but you can do a little research before using DEX. No personal information will be asked by these DEX.

The Blockchain platform is anonymous, and it always ensures the identity of the user of this platform. Bitcoin also has an anonymous feature, so all transactions are public, but the identity of the buyer/seller is secure because of the Blockchain anonymity feature.

You know, the great thing about Bitcoin is that if you never attach any identity to your wallet address, then all they can ever do and all anyone can ever do, is say that that address holds a lot of Bitcoin. I would personally use a mixer now to split off all the coins in a different address and hold them there if you really have millions of dollars worth of BTC. But as long as you keep your private keys secure, shouldn't ever need to worry.

Don't keep your bitcoin to an exchange although they have your information already which I assume you passed on KYC already just to increase your trading limit.

Since most of your questions were answered, you can opt for a mixer - chipmixer to be specific.

I believe OP was asking about how to encash his bitcoin, I don't think DEX is the right platform
DEX is for crypto-to-crypto exchange only, I haven't seen real fiat exchange on DEX
when we need to liquidate bitcoin, we cannot avoid exposing a bit of our personal info
either we do it thru peer-to-peer transaction or a centralized institution (fiat gateway)

use the one you can trust most to exchange your bitcoin, preferably local exchanges
you can try to find and visit their "brick and mortar" office to make sure they are real business
and do it in batches, so if anything goes wrong you don't lose all your money

if you own the private key you own the coins too and no one can see how much you have in your wallet or how much you are worth so relax your identity is secured

You'll be fine. If you have a large number of coins, you can use the numerous available features that help you protect your self, VPN/tor when sending transactions (so they can't link your transaction to your IP address), bitcoin mixers (for making sure your transactions can't be traced to you) and change addresses (so no one will ever know how much BTC you have).

Yeah, same. There hasn't been a lot of DEX's that you can trade crypto for, with maybe the exception of localethereum (if you consider that a dex). For cashing out bitcoin safely, sign up to localbitcoins and message trades if they'd want to do cash trades (they removed this feature, but you can still use the platform to find interested people). This way, there's no track of anything and as long as you meet in a public place, you will be fine.

Yes, do this!

I got some more question about splitting up my wallet

I see several times in this thread that I should "change addresses every time I make a transaction". Does this mean that I should use a new address when I RECEIVE coins to my wallet? Because the receiver when I send will always see how mutch btc there is in the wallet no matter how I do with new addresses?

A suggestion I have is:
1. Send all btc's to an non KYC exchange
2. send ~0.1 btc to a NEW wallet" X amount of times

The only one that can see the total amount of btc I have is the exchange. Perhaps includeing samouraiwallet between step 1 and 2, but I don't really know if it makes any difference?

Another good option is to send the coins to a mixer to make it more anonymous.
But I'm a bit unsure of this alternative because I want to have the option in the future to show that I sent that coin from A -> B (I own wallet A and B). With a mixer it will be A -> "mixer" -> B and can I show any prof that the transaction from the mixer original was "my coins"? Say if eg. the IRS want me to explain all of it and they only see a transaction from the mixer -> B and that they don't belive that it only was a transaction from A. Perhaps a bad example but I hope you got the point of maybe avoiding a mixer..

Never said that in the first post but if I sell my coins to fiat it will only be on a KYC exchanges (even so, I don't want them to see how many coins I have). Or if I buy something with my coins, I dont wan't them to see how mutch coins I have or give them the ability to follow the transaction to the wallet I have now with all my coins. It's the reason why I think it will be a good option to bounce it to a non KYC exchange.

If you are using a good wallet, it has the option to create a new address. You should create a new one fore every transaction. Nobody knows what addresses do you own. However, if you use only one, the people you trnasact with will know how many bitcoin you have.

If you have many addresses, the people you transact with will know only the balance of the address you give them.


This is the best option.

Mixer will not do A > mixer > B.
The mixer will do  dozens, maybe hundreds of transactions with your coins, and will give you other coins (which are not yours). Look at this image, for example
https://bitcoin.org/img/icons/mixing-services.svg?1573599962


if you send a mixer 1 btc, you will probably receive about 10 addresses (at least) with funds. You can read more about a good mixer here:
https://chipmixer.se/faq



If you want to trade for Fiat, just look for a good exchange, do your KYC and sell it. It is the safer way. You would still need to pay taxes. There is no way to make money legally without telling the government. You should do everything in a legal way.

Not really. The point of a Mixer is to break the traceability of your assets, so you can’t really have it both ways (breaking traceability, but still being able to prove they are the same assets), at least through the blockchain.

If worst comes to worst, and you keep a thorough inventory of all your TXs, you could argue that you did send X to a Mixer and received that same X amount (whole, fragmented, or minus feed/donations/bets in any) back in different addresses, but the blockchain will not support that statement (I don’t know how far IRS or equivalent will go into traceability in case of inspection of a "small fish" though).

If you will keep your funds in some hardware wallet then no one will steal your coins until you have shared your private key somewhere. You can trade anonymously if you haven't shared your personal info anywhere means any social media platforms while buy/sell the coins. If you want you can split your fund and keep it in your wallet but try to store all your wallet details safely. Trust the exchange where you had invested before so that there is no risk of losing your money.

Could you not take screen shots and stuff?

If it were me I would not be putting the majority of my funds through a mixer. There may come a time where mixed funds will be a problem with the most uptight exchanges and services.

It makes sense for spending and money that'll interact with people you don't want knowing things about you. Beyond that it's a known unknown and best not to tempt fate.

You could, but I’m not really sure how they would play in the context of an IRS (or equivalent) thorough inspection, if what one wanted to do is be 100% honest as @h0pens seems to be hypothesising here. In fact, this is where any real life Crypto + Mixer + IRS inspected declarant could shed some practical experience to clarify the requested evidences by the IRS. What I underlined is that the blockchain will not be able to tie A to B after going through a Mixer.

Ok I will probably not send my coins to a mixer.
What is the next best suggestion? Perhaps to bounce it with an exchange?

witch wallets have the option to create a new address when you send the transaction that doen't point back to the wallet address?

Almost all wallets create a new address. I can't really think of any proper wallet that doesn't these days. Google the name of the wallet you like and 'HD' and if it is then you get a new address each time.

I'm still not totally certain who you're trying to hide from. If it's from exchanges then going through an exchange to hide makes no sense. If you want to sell it you're going to have to go through one anyway and there aren't that many good ones so you're likely to send it all through one or two.

If you want to spend some elsewhere in the wild then allocate a small amount of it and bounce it through an exchange or mixer. Keep the rest intact. It depends on whether you think someone already knows your overall balance.

I can see US citizens are scared of their IRS but this is getting a little crazy if you are scared of what the IRS may think of you if you mix. If you're under a jurisdiction that is chaotic and unpredictable to the point of giving you bad dreams and making you question your every move, you should change the jurisdiction. You're a free grownup, don't live like a slave.

I don't care about the IRS, never had anything to do with them and I have no plans to change it.
You also shouldn't worry about exchanges. Worst case scenario one country like the US will make their registered exchanges send back all funds that were previously mixed which will be such a hassle for the exchanges that many will just leave the country or go bankrupt. If they ban it there will always be someone to accept it because free market and stuff.

The comment was in the context of a concern raised by the OP:
It’s an interesting question, from someone (the OP) who is trying to play ahead in his mind possible scenarios, in order to derive his moves. Although there may be some answers to his questions in the legal (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=74.0) childboard, or the IRS itself (https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/frequently-asked-questions-on-virtual-currency-transactions), being inquisitive I find always leads to having a better grasp of what may lie around the corner. 

Better safe than sorry is a fine philosophy. Most people don't want to emigrate to spend a bit of money.

I agree that rejecting mixed coins will become nightmarish but the people who demand these rules are too.

Since OP's money is legit and there may be other options, or the option of staying put, then marking them for future ball ache doesn't seem like a good move even if it's an outlandish possibility.

Like I said I'd happily mix coins for spending. I wouldn't do it with a main stash.

It's better to do it via peer to peer transaction in order to avoid being scammed if you are selling including the wallet but I'm afraid that there would be a buyer that would be interested to buy it with wallet because you also have the access on it thus it's better to just sell its balance. If you don't want to transact personally, you may use an escrow in this forum that has a good trust feed back but you should consider that their service isn't free.