Bitcoin Forum

This thread and it contained articles rised my very big concerns about adaptation of bitcoin and users "privacies" which eliminations of third party was a core mechanism factor of the blockchain.
To make this short, we can not keep a 100% anonymity with our bitcoin rather, we can only keep self custody of our funds in the decentralized networks. So those with the mentality that you would own bitcoin without the awareness of the public or anyone should take note because, there is absolutely no way you can purchase bitcoin without atleast minimal revealing of your identity or kyc.

This reason is also why scammers can not go scot free when the authorities is actually ready to fish you out where criminal believes bitcoin is a scam free monetary technology.
Non-custodial is the main thing where authority does not decide how you uses your funds while you can not keep total anonymity if you must transact on the p2p.

You need to use non-custodial wallets for totally control your bitcoins, UTXOs, and your inputs, outputs for transactions. You need to run your Bitcoin full node, and use Tor when broadcasting your Bitcoin transactions from your Bitcoin full node.

Privacy, anonymity will depend on your practice, from wallet you use, how you choose UTXOs, inputs, outputs and whether you use a full node plus Tor for your transaction.

Privacy matters.
Anonymity matters.
However, they are not automatic, you must have knowledge and good practice to have them.

There is some truth in this thread because the majority of newbies and some us do acquire Bitcoin either through centralized exchanges or decentralized exchanges, the physical p2p is not more safe because of privacy, and you will hardly see people buying Bitcoin through physical p2p on my region, we all rely mostly on exchanges to purchase Bitcoin, and since we do mostly submit KYC to the exchanges, we might not be anonymous again only if we send the coins to a self custody wallet that we can control on our own.
This means that there is still self custody, but that anonymity is not as strong as it used to be in the past but since our wallets is self control wallets, we can still be anonymous especially if we use mixers to send our Bitcoin out before it gets to the next destination.

Why are we talking about privacy the more if at the end everything about us will still be seen by the third party, am not saying that the blockchain technology is not transparent enough, but we can also go off-chain with our transactions and be more private about it, such as using Bitcoincore, you have self custody of your asset and still choose to be traced or anonymous or not at your discretion, but not everyone knows this.

There's, Face to Face trade.

You can trade without need to create an account which you submit KYC and you receive the payment in cash, so the banks didn't know it.

There's also an another way, you buy Bitcoin in no KYC P2P/DEX and then if you want to sell your coins, instead of sell the coins, you can buy gift cards and sell it. So, people would see you a gift card seller than Bitcoin investor.

Not worth it. Remember this:  22 Years Old Robbed of $850,000 USDT at Karachi Airport (Pakistan) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5563635.msg65974799#msg65974799)

The risks of face to face trading are very high. While maintaining your privacy is important, I think protecting yourself from dangerous situations is also important. There are bound to be bad actors in such space and if you’re trading coins worth over $500 you stand the chance of getting robbed.

The exposure on the face to face transactions is even the worse of breaking privacy because you would be getting yourself exposed physically not just Kyc but revealing your real self and also as endangering yourself to physical risks.
Even if you have to do with a reputable dealer on the physical p2p, you are equally not keeping a 100% anonymity which is still the point of my original point of view that we can not mask our identity completely. Moreover, there could be a compromise from the other party and as we know, there is risk on trust levels.

Don't be ridiculous, we have reputable non kyc exchanges that you can purchase your bitcoin from, check this site Kycnot.me. Nobody said the block chain would give you full privacy, it gives you to a certain amount, but your transactions can still be traced by Blockchain data analyst because it's very much transparent.

What is meant by the anonymity the Blockchain provides is the fact that if you purchase your bitcoin without going through centralized platforms, you are rest assured not to be linked with your real life identity. It's that Simple.

The only problem we have today is that people prefer purchasing bitcoin from centralized systems which from the very beginning take away any form of privacy bitcoin was supposed to offer.

It has always been that way, to make a purchase or a sale you will need a currency to give in exchange. If this is something decentralized you can still maintain our anonymity, but if you have to use fiat digitally you will be giving away some sort of info. This is not a serious risk however and limits your exposure to the bare minimum.

In this case the other party is likely not keeping logs of your details, so you are not at risk of a compromise from that end.

- Jay -

What is actually bugging you in the entire context? If you have reputable non kyc platforms that allows you to sell and buys bitcoins, is it not like an uneasy task on how you can facilitate on the payment on the p2p before the bitcoin can be released to your non-custodial wallet? And yet, we are talking about extreme Privacies.
If you don't get me clearly, I will put it other way round, what method do you use to make payments to the vendor in the platform before receiving the bitcoin to your wallet?

Bitcoin gives both, self-custody and anonymity, but only if people can use them the right way. Of course, if you are using centralized platforms where you have completed identity verification, you can't say that you are private or anonymous, because they are basically able to see whatever you do on their platform and since your name is written on the profile, they know it's you. So if you want to stay anonymous and private, you should only use decentralized platforms and services.

It's not true that you can't buy Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies without revealing your identity, because there are platforms that allow you to do that, and even if you have to use a bank account or something initially, the wallet you use to receive your coins won't have any traces of your name or identity, and that's how you stay anonymous and private, unless you make a mistake again by sending or receiving coins from a centralized platform to that wallet.

Are we to make peace with a part of centralization (exchanges), yes we have no other choice than to accept, using an exchange won't matter most if your process of acquiring Bitcoin is legit, only those with bad coins will have problem using exchanges, knowing they can be traced from KYC submitted.

Bitcoin gives you self custody and keeps you pseudonymous, your wallet address becomes your identity when spending with traces on the blockchain that can't lead to a real identity, due to multitude of people that already accepted exchanges makes it less of a big deal at this stage.

That's how I've been trading for years.

Bitcoin ATMs that operate with no KYC up to a certain cash limit.
P2P transactions
Gift cards
Payments in places that accept bitcoin

I'm pretty sure I maintain a decent level of anonymity.

Also, any amount of anonymity over what the banks is good because what alse do we have? Not many people want to carry around heaps of cash, especially in countries with weak currencies where you need spend 10+ bills to buy basic groceries.

I've never registered on an exchange, I have never done any KYC. All my Bitcoin is anonymous. You are wrong. Bitcoin provides you with the option to choose. Don't blame Bitcoin if you choose to use it in a non anonymous way.

Utter stupidity by a brain damaged mongrel. If you are an uneducated and undeveloped person who is not capable of high level thinking, that does not mean that your world view reflects reality. There are countless reasons for which someone does not want to provide KYC. There is no good reason to do KYC at all. If you bow down to there draconian laws and support them, you are just an idiot. There is no argument here to be had.

Anyone with "bad coins" who is not a complete amateur will be able to bypass any AML detection. You don't have a single valid sentence in your reply. Lastly, bad actors can buy KYC anonymously for cheap and use it to launder the coins. They won't be traced to anything, only the dumbest amateurs get traced.

It is still possible to a certain level, and to do that you need to,

1. Stop using KYC exchanges to buy Bitcoin.
2. Don't reuse your addresses.
3. Only buy Bitcoin from Bisq or any other possible means where you no need to provide any kind of identification.

You can avoid anyone linking your name with your bitcoin transactions, which is enough to say that I am private for an average user.

To state that it is possible to a certain level is incorrect. It is possible to use Bitcoin in a completely anonymous way in isolated or specific scenarios. It is very difficult to do this consistently and over long periods of time, but it is possible. What you can't have is private transactions though. The data of the transactions will be always publicly visible, even if the public can't be certain on what exactly is going on in the transactions. If one needs anonymity and privacy then one must use Monero.

Whether this is practical for the average person or not does not diminish its possibility. For the best results, the average person can simply have completely separate wallets and balances. Once is KYC'd and the other is completely anonymous. Use each where it is needed or where it is more appropriate.

Anonymity is declining in bitcoin, I’m sure years back it used to be one of the most anonymous means of receiving payment and one would able to find you but I still believe there are ways to do it regardless of how it has become so public information that someone just bought bitcoin but however your right that decentralization is the core ground of bitcoin right now than privacy or anonymity, the only currency fully anonymous now is monero which is being fought against by governments by all means but bitcoin still give you the highest level of freedom in spending and transacting which would never be compared to fiat or cash.

Why are we saying we cannot actually have total privacy with bitcoin, I still think even if the process is actually a lot more complicated or requires you to be careful there is technically a chance of been anonymous with bitcoin, the transactions you still think are public are definitely nothing as long as it is not linked to a specific person or linked to some addresses, this is easily common by using new addresses for every new bitcoin transactions and never to actually link them together, this way the public’s sees bitcoin but never knows who it belongs to. This to me is anonymity and still privacy.

This is because you don't understand the definitions of privacy and anonymity. They are entirely different things. A very simplified and shortened version:

• Transaction Privacy: Hiding the contents of the transaction.
• Transaction Anonymity: Hiding the (real) participants of the transactions.

You can have privacy without anonymity, you can have anonymity without privacy, and you can have both privacy and anonymity. All these combinations are possible. With Bitcoin you can have anonymity if you use it correctly, but you an never have privacy. All information is always public, even if it is subject to interpretation.

What it is to you is meaningless, that is an uneducated approach to life. It is as if I said to me the sun is a giant snowball. Do you see how retarded that sounds? Transaction privacy and transaction anonymity have their own definitions in scientific literature, and these are the definitions that must be followed. You can't define them however you want.

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This is a good learning opportunity for you, I suggest that you take it. This way you can avoid ending up like many clowns here who write whatever they want with a tone of certainty even though they are writing complete misinformation. Asking questions is always better.

Some scammers go scot-free unfortunately, because authorities won't work to solve each and every case especially those that are in smaller scale. Investigating also doesn't lead to the outcome they want.

In addition, buying and selling of verified crypto accounts are rampant, some also offer after-sales in case the particular account gets flagged. Loads of bad actors resort to this. Meanwhile, law abiding folks bears the risk of having their personal information leaked lol. 10/10 i feel protected everytime I kyc.  /s

Bitcoin is as anonymous as you can make it to be. Buying bitcoin through P2P won't expose your identity but honestly even if bitcoin is not anonymous, the fact that nobody control your money or able to freeze your money randomly is already a good advantage for me.

If you've used remittance services back in the days you will know how beneficial is using bitcoin and its decentralized blockchain.

Anonymous, yes. But private? Nope.

You need to understand the difference between these two terms. The blockchain is a public ledger, it is designed to be transparent. Anyone can see the balance in your address and track the flow of incoming and outgoing transactions. This information (as an example) is even used by some members to find and expose campaign cheaters in the forum, although they still remain anonymous.

You actually stated facts, Bitcoin doesn't really give anonymity, even if you don't use your real name to make your transactions based on the fact that your address is there it can always be traced back to you. Self custody is important because it gives you control over your money without being tied or dependent to bank limitations or restrictions. Bitcoin only guarantees privacy and not anonymity there is actually a difference

If you are looking for anonymous transactions go and look for XMR, it is build with privacy and anonymity in mind, Bitcoin doesn't offer any of these than decentralisation.

There are ways that you can use your Bitcoin in a privacy way and that's through mixers or specially made Bitcoin wallets like Samorai wallet, this is users choices to make but way different from something that was build from scratch as a anonymous digital currency.

Bitcoin can't serve all our needs which is why I believe that it is not going to be enough, Bitcoin existence isn't to eradicate other digital currencies but to exists along with them.

You've said it yourself. If the transactions are already public, how can they be private? Every bitcoin transaction is public for anybody to see on the network. The difference is, since it's just an address and not a name, a social security number or a face, you cant tell who made that transaction; that's anonymity.

Take the forum, for example. It's a pseudonymous forum. I could be a lady posing as a man; nobody knows, but everybody sees every post I make. My posts are public for anybody who comes to the website to see, but they don't know who I am. The moment you click "post", your post becomes public. People can see your post and know which account posted it, but you, who is behind the account, is anonymous (unless you've revealed yourself, of course). It's not so different from Bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions are public, not private.

P2P trading cannot guarantee complete anonymity.
If you choose to transact directly and pay in cash. You may also have your face recognized or be recorded on camera by someone else.

If you use a bank account or e-wallet, your transaction history will be saved and the authorities can still track you.

Using a gift is probably the best way to ensure anonymity but this depends on the seller, as they may ask you to provide photo ID for verification.

In general, it is easier to stay anonymous with small transactions because they are less noticeable, but with large transactions, it is much harder.
But, yes, Bitcoin cannot guarantee us absolute anonymity but it can guarantee us complete control over our money.

I actually agreed, using bank account or e-wallet still exposes identity, but usually using bank account or e-wallet is enough to keep people from using CEX and forcefully demanded to do KYC to prevent personal information stealing and for me this is enough.

If people want anonymity using bitcoin they can always P2P with cash.

Main problem with crypto, as you have rightly said, is that to get safety and more people using it, you have to give up freedom and privacy, since 100% anonymity is lost second you use controlled exchange to buy crypto, as KYC rules connect your wallet address to your real name, allowing government to follow transactions on public record. Still, you still have main good point self-custody means that you will have full rule over your money and government will not be able to stop your money right away, which is most important freedom that remains, and this tracing feature will also help authorities to catch criminals who mistakenly think that Bitcoin is untraceable.

It's super dangerous for your safefy physically and in worst case you can be killed, not only robbed or partially physical harmed. It is not good for your privacy while it has very high risk of losing your bitcoin, even your life.

There are many reports on terrible phyiscal attacks with many different consequences with worse ones are deaths.
Physical Bitcoin attacks. (https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks)
Physical Bitcoin attacks (2). (https://github.com/demining/Physical-Bitcoin-Attacks)

You're right. Bitcoin is not anonymous but pseudonymous, after any address is associated with you the footprint is traceable. Self-custody is the actual power, as you have the complete control over your money without having to use banks. There is privacy, but no anonymity.

Hmm, I think it's a different topic if we talk about bank account and e-wallet because if we talk about those centralized payments for sure it will expose our identity. Example if we use Monero, it's a privacy oriented coins and no one can see the transaction because the blockchain is private. If we use bank account or e-wallet to buy/sell Monero, our identity would be exposed too.

Bitcoin is anonymity and strongly private and this why people are always avoiding centralized exchanges, and even when you do p2p depends on how the whole thing is going. And anything that as to do with data collection was not the main the plan for bitcoin from the first time. And since the centralized exchanges is now in picture we have to live with it, and the self custody is one of the best innovation exept for does leaving there bitcoin in an exchange but they will one day learn the hard way.


When you are using a decentralized network if gives you freedom with exposure of your data, and some people have not really learned and this is all because they did not do there own research before starting, because they would have seen people with different experiences.

How is putting your physical safety at risks any way better than undergoing KYC procedures? Face to face trading should be highly discouraged here. There are numerous risks including the risk of physical robbery and even loss of life if the Bitcoin holder tries to resist the attackers. Unless you trust the other party 100%, never try to meet anyone for physical trading. P2P and DEX are much safer and reduce the need for much KYC.

Exactly, you get it. Most people that write about these topics do not have any experience or knowledge on what is actually going on. That is why they write generic nonsense.

Next time read the posts on the first page before writing something that I have already explained.

Wrong. Enjoy your negative tag for lying about the basics on how Bitcoin work. An address can not be traced back to a person unless there is additional information which can be used with that. Bitcoin does NOT provide privacy.

Complete nonsense. Nobody gives a fuck who you are in P2P. You are just a poor person, do you think someone will track you over your $200 transaction? Stop watching so many action movies idiot. ::)

Another stupid idiot writing nonsense about topics which you have no idea about. You are make a false comparison between doing a P2P trade with a random person and using a trusted CEX. If you want to compare these without looking like a complete retard then you must compare a P2P trade with a random person and the use of a random, no-name CEX that nobody has heard of. Which is safer? Giving your data to this CEX?  ::)

P2P trading is a huge industry. No established player will risk their reputation over your pathetically small transaction. Clients often want discretion, facilitators want reputation and clients. If you know what you are doing, you are never going to have a single issue.

How will your address be tracked to you if you are not using centralized data change wallet that have your details with them in form of KYC?

Bitcoin transactions is not like bank transactions where your account details will contain all your information, it is something anonymous even though the transaction is public in a blockchain, who owns a wallet only knows his wallet, no one can track your wallet back to you personally, but your balance and transactions can be monitored.

I still believe there is both privacy and anonymity in Bitcoin is being used in decentralized way.

What is the guarantee that the cash you received is following you home or to the place you would like to utilize it?

This is more like setting yourself up. You can finish exchanging your coins for cash and when you're done sending the coins successfully you may be held at a gun point to give back the cash, IMO face to face is even worse than doing KYC. I only do face to face with people that I know very well and am sure they are into crypto.

Back to the topic, I do not think you can achieve 100% anonymity especially when you've meddled with CEX, you can try using mixing services like mixers and CoinJoin features but that still doesn't guarantee 100% anonymity, it only makes it harder to link the coins back to you.

Like in the case of Satoshi, we all know his wallet and the amount of bitcoins he owns but we cannot know his real identity. Because it is not linked to any of his personal information. However, his identity could be exposed if he intends to sell and convert his bitcoins into fiat, even if he uses decentralized services. Because fiat always goes through the banking system or other centralized services.

So it can be said that our anonymity will be guaranteed in the crypto space when using decentralized services. But once we decide to convert them to fiat or vice versa, our identity can be exposed at any time.

The most important thing is to distinguish between fraudulent behavior and the underlying reasons for privacy or anonymity. We must also discuss the perspectives, so that each individual can develop a perspective on anonymity and self-custody in their Bitcoin investment journey. Unfortunately, not everyone may use these techniques, as many people may still be willing to undergo KYC when using centralized exchanges, so that we no longer talk about privacy or anonymity.

Some argue that there are other methods, such as face-to-face trading, but these are also quite risky because crime can arise from opportunity, and we never know how the risks could be far worse than trading on an exchange. Of course, everyone has considered all the possibilities, and we must be selective to maintain our personal and asset security.

I agree with you on this, one should never risk physical security by not following the KYC procedure. It is not safe to carry Bitcoin anywhere where our fiat currency is not safe.

Because Bitcoin is very valuable.

Now coming to the OP's words, in fact, everyone can see Bitcoin transactions and it is understood who is transacting how much money but who is behind this address cannot be seen.

You are right, those who buy Bitcoin on a CEX, even if they withdraw it and keep it in their own wallet, cannot completely escape government oversight. There is a history of deposits and withdrawals on the exchange that can be tracked. 
We maintain the self-custody of the Bitcoin we own. But it is not entirely anonymous. Some people will not be happy with the changes that occur. But some will not mind.

Self custody can be achieved, but anonymity is a difficult topic to thread on because the government would do anything possible including claim suspicion of money laundering just to de-anonymize your transactions if possible. Therefore, ones anonymity either as self custody or not, is only as good as their weakest link.

However, there are ways to improve anonymity and be safer from hackers and scammers and thieves and it may involve a good knowledge base to be able to apply the strategy of breaking any link between ones address and their identity.
The strategy to break traceability or transactions when using on-chain tools may include, avoiding the reuse of address, using Tor/VpN to obscure network, learning to run a private node and for offline solutions one should consider using lightening network to move transactions off the public Bitcoin Blockchain network.
This is not totally guaranteed methods or strategies but it would help maintain anonymity as better tools are developed.

Exactly that is hard choice that Bitcoin users have to make between ease of regulated exchanges that ask for giving up of privacy KYC and anonymity of self custody or face to face trading. Ease of CEXs is liked by many people as it is safer and easier, although it comes at cost of less privacy. But you rightly show that other ways such as face to face trading may bring risk of crime that can be far more serious than online risk. So, each investor has to make his or her own decisions on what level of privacy and convenience is best and has to be highly careful to make sure that his or her assets are safe.

Complete generic nonsense. You are a NOBODY, the government does not care about you and will not target you. What you have claimed here never happens in P2P, therefore your whole line of arguing falls dead in the water. I have been using Bitcoin exclusively in P2P mode since I have discovered it, I have never had an issue. If you expect to do something stupid like buy something very expensive without providing a source for your money, don't blame "anonymity" blame yourself for being stupid.

None of these tools break transaction traceability. Next time don't talk about topics in which you don't have any experience at all.

No, face to face does not bring increased risk of crime. It is YOU who is engaging in these activities wrong. When something bad happens, it is a consequence of your wrong behavior and stupidity and not of the thing itself.

This is what I was telling one buddy now, Bitcoin isn't place you can do crimes and run away. This is why you see stolen Bitcoin are not spend able, because ones Bitcoin is a stolen one, the public becomes aware of it, anytime buyers and seller see the coin in the market, they avoid doing transactions with such coins, they don't want to be involved in anything that will take them to jail.

Bitcoin is one of the best asset to make invest, it's the only asset you can buy from scratch and if you have the patience to hold it you are going to make money but you have to believe in it and hold it for sometime, unlike some other government back investment.

Smaller scale scamming is always over looked and that's understandable but the situation is different in my country, there are leaders that are funding terrorists and killing innocent people, and there come some exposure that they used Bitcoin to fund the terrorist organisations but somehow they took over the proof and raided the whistle blower.

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Even kidnappers are boyant enough to come online and show the world that they have secured some money from kidnapped victims and nothing anyone can do about it, this can never happen in the U.S and other countries, this shows that the level of corruption in my country is on another level.

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It doesn't even matter anymore, criminals from my country can boldly move funds and even reveal their faces via KYC or others with no fear of been caught because the government don't care about going after these people, this is why I will never go against the idea that Trump want to get rid of the islamic terror funders killing Christians here.

Well, the main purpose of Bitcoin anonymity is to protect people from evil rather from governments that will less likely abuse the rules governing privacy.
Anonymity/privacy is natural right, but not a right or legal for criminal purposes, which is why government requires everyone to go through kyc. The kyc in itself is illegal if it violates the privacy right of the innocent. To violate the privacy right of the innocent means someone else can know what the innocent wants to be hidden for everyone. So, the authority may try to prevent this possible abuse by blindly collecting user's IDs and only revealing them when they commit crime. But the issue with centralized ID collection, unlike decentralized one, is that user's IDs are in the custody of other people, and there is no guarantee that what is meant to be hidden won't be seen by them

By the way, it's possible to use Bitcoin anonymously without ever revealing your identity to anyone. That will make it 100% of anonymity. But this won't be publicize unless there is a way to permanently capture the users identities without ever revealing them to other people. Don't want it to be used for criminals purposes hence the need for the immutability or permanent capture.

Even if we say the transactions are anonymous in bitcoin, still, you can trace where the coins will end up with and see what sites it may go to. And since the technology today is more sophisticated than before, it is now possible to dig more about the details of where will it end up with. This is why most stolen BTCs are quite hard to spend because you can trace the transactions and one single mistake can disclose your identity.

That doesn't make much sense. You don't have to be somebody for the government to target you or anything, they don't target individuals, but they target the whole nation and you are among them, so even if you are a nobody, it's not that the government doesn't care, they do care, and that's the reason why they would want to have control over you and your finances, that's the reason why the governments are or have always been against cryptocurrencies because they don't want to lose control, not only of you but of all their people.

Anonymity and privacy are problems for governments, and it's not about specific individuals; they don't like them for the masses. If it's only a few people, they probably might not care much, but when it's about masses, they do care because they can't let that happen, this makes them lose control, and they don't want to lose control at all. That's why, they actually do care, as long as you are among the masses, even if you are a nobody by yourself.