Bitcoin Forum

I mean, to disconnect them from your name.

A Reddit user suggests to send your bitcoins to a Silk Road wallet, then back to another wallet/address:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c8yb3/a_stepbystep_guide_to_creating_an_anonymous/c9e99nu

However I am confused: do you actually have to send them to a new wallet as well? A new address in the same wallet (such as Qt, Electrum) will not suffice?

Well that might work because I think SR has its own internal tumblers that mix the coins, but people can work out what SR wallets they use so it's probably not 100% safe. And it's probably best sending them to a new wallet if you're trying to remove the traces back to your name.

maybe you have to wait for Zerocoin for that...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=362468.msg3878992#msg3878992

not free, but low fees   https://bitmixer.io/

Isn't it sufficient to transfer from your wallet => any exchange => a second wallet you own (where no one knows the addresses belong to you)?

Now it's only you and the exchange that knows the second wallet belongs to you. If you registered with a false name, not even the exchange knows.

Am I right?

exactly.

https://i.imgur.com/t7vQl.gif

Blockchain has it's shared transactions too but there is some fee for each repetition.

deposit them into an exchange and then withdraw. you end up with different coins, as exchanges act like a mixer. and the better part is you dont have to touch legally dodgy sites like silk road.

other options are to swap it for litecoins. and take those litecoins out and then use the litecoins on another exchange to convert back to bitcoins

If you mix 1BTC with three forward addresses you will get 0.9935BTC back. Not bad if you ask me ;)
Their fee is 0.5% plus 0.0005 BTC for every forward address.

Use playt.in it is free. It is gambling site but also a mixer.

We are the first anonymous coin with a practical solution to reducing taint, we happen to be Tor based.

You can download our client and check "Send by delegate".

The best way I can think of is to give them to me. I won't tell anyone. 8)

LMAO

The best way to completely anonimize your coins is the following:

a) Send the coins to Mixing Service A and have the mixed coins delivered to one of your addresses.
b) Send the coins to Mixing Service B and have the mixed coins delivered to one of your addresses.
c) Send the coins to Mixing Service C and have the mixed coins delivered to one of my addresses.

NOBODY will ever know that you ever had those coins ;)
Vanished forever!
Guaranteed!!!

Both of the above are correct.  I find it funny seeing people chasing a thief through the block chain.  The thief kept using mixers but even then, he was still relatively easy to chase.

If the thief were to simply use an exchange that doesn't use ID Verification, the outgoing coins should be unrelated.

...

My experiences only (none FREE, but at low cost):

1) I sent BTC from my blockchain.info wallet via sharedcoin.com (http://sharedcoin.com) to my Multibit wallet

2) Then sent about as much back to my first account via bitmixer.io (http://bitmixer.io).

Both seemed to work fine for me, transactions all done (inc. a confirmation or two) in about an hour, per transaction.  So it does take some time to use two services in a row, and there are some (low) costs, but in combination they seem to work well.

***

I also did the reverse starting from Multibit wallets to blockchain.info (via bitmixer.io) and then back to Multibit via sharedcoin.com.  I did all of this about eight times, and now have my BTC in four wallets (one on blockchain.info and one each of my three computers).

It *seems* to cover the trail pretty well, especially in that it looks like each service uses an intermediary wallet.  But, I am not an expert and would like to learn more!

Especially about other well-regarded mixing services

AND

any other easy techniques that help cover the trail of little fishez like us seeking financial privacy.

when i'm using agora i'd like to change the btc address every time

cause the #cops don't know whether the #weed is for violence or peace

You can also buy an altcoin on one exchange, send the alt to another exchange, then convert back to bitcoin.

One important thing is how many bitcoins are you trying to anonymize. A few hundred or even a few thousand is probably no trouble, but when you get up to more than 10k bitcoins, I think the trail will be more obvious. To anonymize that much would start to involve major slippage or a lot more work.

As Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) grows, it will get easier and easier to anonymize large sums of money. Exchanges all over the world, some in places that don't follow KYC/AML rules, others that don't really have a subpoena process, large altcoin economies to shift, Darkcoin growing, ect.

Hiding(anonymizing) a $million dollars a day in bitcoin is fairly easy right now. In another 5 years, you could probably hide a $billion dollars a day with no problem. And in 10 years, maybe a $trillion dollars a day with no problem.

Another advice that I haven't seen anyone give: After you send them to mixers (exchange to dedicated services), don't withdraw the same exact amount, and withdraw them at different times. I just adds another layer of security. For example, if you send 100btc to an exchange, withdraw 25btc first, then 43btc, then the last 32btc. Do it in random time intervals.

The problem with using the exchanges is that you do not know if they are logging the information.  Ditto if the mixing services are not anonymous and they keep logs, then you could be tracked.

A lot depends on the threat you are trying to avoid attack from - is it just a regular person or is it a well funded group who may have compromised any of the exchanges.  

Certainly for most "foes" the above is sufficient.  For some foes of the Edward Snowden variety, it is not.  

DarkWallet will help, other options, even alts like dark coin may too.
 
:-)

1. Send your btc to an exchange

2. Buy darkcoin with the btc and send those to a wallet

3. Send them anonymously to another darkcoin wallet.

4. Open another exchange account and sell your darkcoin for btc.

5. Create another wallet address for btc and send newly purchased btc to account.

Can someone enlighten me?

I must be missing something since most people's solution involves more complication than I thought required.
Why couldn't a person just create a few one-time-use wallets, use tor and transfer the coin through those wallets to a final destination address, and then delete the intermediary wallets. Those addresses would never appear again in the blockchain, so how could someone prove they belong to you?

^ If you send them from wallet to wallet, it's the same bitcoins moving, which can be traced.

No need to convert to an altcoin or use a mixer. Simply send your BTC to Bter or Mintpal and then withdraw to new wallet. Done!

Send to an exchange. Transfer to another exchange. Withdraw.

As others have said, send to an exchange or a casino. Just don't be tempted go gamble them  ;D.

If I were the FBI or Interpol I would set up a dozen mixer sites out there, with the best interface and lowest fees; and quietly stamp out or co-opt any real ones.  That way I would get a list of suspicious bitcoin users and I would not have to chase their btcoins in the blockchain.

Fortunately the FBI and Interpol are dumber than me.  :D

I don't want to waste anyone's time, so if there is something online I can read, please say so.

I thought that the addresses and transactions are traceable and part of the blockchain history, but how would the coin itself be traceable? Transactions just consist of moving amounts from one address to another, right? As I understand it, you can't tell where my coin came from except only by looking at transaction history in the blockchain, and if you don't know who has the private key to those sending addresses, how is it traceable?

Guess it's time to go read the whole satoshi white paper...

dark-wallets(but they are very experimental at the moment).

some underground exchange that allows you deposit and withdraw without need of verification, use high anonymous proxy or tor.

mixers.

buy the coins using fake identities or from someone of your real life.

Think this are the best ways, depends from who you are hiding.

Always connect through Tor and you are completely anonymous that way.

Blockchain.info shared coin is the best option for now. It does not completely disconnect the chain of payments, but it is safe and easy. Expect all wallets to have this feature in the future.

This is the best I've seen http://bitmix4you.com/

Does SharedCoin (on Blockchain) not do an adequate enough job?

I  think so.

coins ARE tracked.  coins and pieces of coins move from address to address.  all movement is recorded forever.  the blockchain keeps ONLY a record of creation of the coins and afterwards the movements from address to address.   there is no calculation of the total.  the client checks the blockchain movement records from the beginning of time and calculates the total for the addresses you have in your wallet. 

this is my interpretation. someone can elaborate with a technical explanation on this subject or totally fud my statement.

not free, but low fees

I'm not an elitist - I just think I'm better than you are. 

Im not sure whether or not its worthwhile to mix my coins.  I mean, I dont really have anything to hide except the fact that my coins belong to me, but ultimately I will own addresses with coins in them so my problem stays.

Hopefully someone builds a client that automatically mixes anyway.

like you said in OP, send to a few different exchanges (not in your name and loaded via Tor)
or use a paid mixing service.. either or really...
hmm or both

But how do you know they are not just recording the "mixing" they are doing?

^^ This.

Blockchain.info's "Shared Coin" easy to figure out, thus, not so shared...

Reddit: Confirmed Blockchaininfo Shared Coin is Broken (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27rsv8/confirmed_blockchaininfo_shared_coin_is_broken/)

I cant remember the name - but there was a site where you were able to swap your BTC for other BTC. Coinmixer.com or something like that ???

so we are back at Zerocoin  ::)

It's a question of how you got the coins in the first place, for one. If you bought them on an exchange and your adversary is someone who can find out which address you withdrew them to, you need to mix coins from other sources in to hide that. If your chain of transactions starts at address A and ends at Z, and A can be linked to you, it doesn't matter how many hops  you go through to get to Z if there are no other original inputs than A in the chain of transactions. A mixer would alleviate this concern, but they may keep logs. You'd need to use several different services for added security. The odds of all of them being corrupt are lower than the odds of one of them being corrupt.

I don't think that's the kind of scenario most people worry about, though. IMO the more pressing question is: Do you want everyone you pay to be able to tell how much BTC you hold? I think it's tremendously unsafe not to employ some method of concealing your full holdings. Mark my words, one day someone will get tortured and killed for BTC because they paid the wrong person and they saw their customer is worth millions in this instantly transferrable currency.

For that purpose, simply moving funds through an exchange should suffice. I'd recommend at least separating spending funds from other holdings and taking care to keep the two segregated.

CoinMixR.com

with KYC requirements, wouldn't sending the unmixed coin to the first exchange expose you even more?

KYC is not required at some exchanges so long as certain account thresholds are not met. It's usually $1000 or so.

I can track mixed coins fairly easily with crude tools (like <ctrl> "f" - yes on my keyboard) using taint analysis on blockchain.info. One fellow recently won a bounty from blockchain.info for using a more sophisticated, but still fairly crude data analysis tool that he wrote himself to discover the id of a mixed Tx. If I cared about concealing coins, I would use the exchange method.

There are a number of low cost tumblers/mixers

inputs.io
blockchain shared send
bitcoin fog
SR 2

This is as close to free as you will get.

Blockchain shared send has been proven to be inefficient, bitcoin fog and other centralized solutions are not only potentially compromised (in which case they would offer no real effect) but you would have to rely on them not getting compromised ever even if you used them once.

imo best is to use exchanges as the anonimizers + withdraw random amounts not same ones

1. Buy stuff from SilkRoad
2. Sell Stuff locally
3. Buy Bitcoin with Cash from Local Sells
4. Mix + Profit
5. Repeat

lol

blockchain shared send will probably not help you hide from a determined attacker, but it would help from someone with very limited resources. Even a determined attacker cannot track coins that go through shared send with 100% accuracy.

inputs.io and bitcoin fog both claim to delete their logs after x amount of time. As long as they do not become compromised after x amount of time then your privacy is secure. I believe "x" is around a week (they delete logs after a week) but I may be incorrect on this.

BTGuard is not free actually, but  $6.95 for a month is not big money I think