Option 3 is also secure.

I checked the orderbook, and there are over 700 BTC in liquidity. The default coordinator from Wasabi uses less than that, but I get your concern. Total bitcoin from inputs and total inputs should be what defines the anonymity set. I'm also not aware of what's the total bitcoin in Samurai's liquidity. I'll remove it as "best" for the time being.

I was paying about $4 to $6 for 9 inputs when the fees weren't high. I had once paid over $10. We should take into consideration that it's been months since the mempool was nearly empty.

Well, I want to keep this free of personal complains and as much objective and on-the-point as possible. What the default coordinator does with the money it makes isn't important for the coinjoin user, but for the integrity of their business. If treating the currency as non-fungible for a pro-fungibility claimed company isn't making the splash, then the cooperation with analysis company won't either.

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Due to recent events with mixer being confiscated by authorities, or mixer doing an exit scam, or with a seemingly legitimate pro-privacy company going in the opposite direction, I think a clarification of where we are at the moment in protecting the users' privacy is necessary.

There are three ways to secure privacy of your bitcoins, each of which comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Pick according to what fits you best.

1. CoinJoining - what is this?

There are three ways to do a coinjoin with a large liquidity and effectively. Joinmarket, Whirlpool, and Wasabi. We'll break down each.

Joinmarket [Github]
pros:

• Decentralized; each of you can become your own coordinator if you provide sufficient liquidity. The protocol is designed to work with many takers (those that will take ordinary users' offers).
• Self-custody.
• Large liquidity for coinjoins. (orderbook)

cons:

• Difficult to setup for the average user.
• Expensive; you're paying for the inputs of the takers. Those inputs are recommended to be more than 9, so you'll be paying for at least a large in size transaction. This can be in the range of $5 to $10 sometimes.
• Running your own full node is a requirement. (even though you should either way do that, as noted below)

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Whirlpool - [samouraiwallet.com]
pros:

• Self-custody.
• Very effective, contains ~8,500 BTC in liquidity and you can make as many coinjoins as you want once you enter a pool.
• Cheap. For amounts within 0.001 and 0.025 BTC, you're paying only 5,000 sat. For larger amounts less than 0.7 BTC, 50,000 sat. (mining fees asides)
  

cons:

• Not fundamentally decentralized; you'll be using Samurai's whirlpool, as they have the most liquidity.

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Wasabi - [wasabiwallet.io]
pros:

• Self-custody.
• Cheap. A fresh input (that isn't already coinjoined) will only cost 0.3% of the amount with free remixes according to the wiki. (mining fees asides)

cons:

• Not decentralized. Liquidity sits on top of the default coordinator, even though it's theoretically possible connect to other servers (none of which I'm aware of).
• Service treats the currency as non-fungible and might blacklist your inputs without rationale given.
• Software is caught to have flaws with protecting user's privacy: https://twitter.com/wasabistats.
• Funds blockchain analysis company and requests permission from them when user does coinjoin.

Note: To enjoy great levels of privacy with coinjoin, running your own full node is a prerequisite (unless you're using Wasabi which utilizes block filtering). If viewing your wallet's balance requires a third party, then the gained privacy is questionable.

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2. Mixer services

In this category falls every Internet service that runs individually and is often advertised in this forum. You can find an extended list in here: 2023 List Bitcoin Mixers Bitcoin Tumblers Websites. Each service might come with other benefits, but they all fundamentally share the same pros and cons following:

pros:

• Can be cheap. In fact, some services in the past charged you absolutely nothing.
• Can be very effective. Services in the past used techniques like time travel and cutting of blockchain connection, both of which are impossible to do with coinjoins.

cons:

• You're forfeiting the custody of your coins.
• Trust that the service isn't a honeypot or doesn't keep logs is needed.

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3. Swapping bitcoin with a private cryptocurrency

The third option is most likely underestimated. Swapping decentralized, cheaply, and with the largest anonymity set currently available (Monero / XMR), is attractive. Let's look in each pro and con closely.

pros:

• Decentralized, using Bisq, you can trade bitcoin for XMR, and there appear to be lots of offers: https://bisq.markets/market/xmr_btc
• Very effective; largest anonymity set (about $2.6B in market cap). You can also take advantage of the time; you can keep the XMR for an indefinite time, and make yourself even more untraceable.
• Self-custody. (if Bisq is used)
• No trust required. Monero is a network resulted from cryptographic achievements like ring signatures and their combination with confidential transactions.

cons:

• Might be a little complicated, as the user has to get along with Monero, and maybe even run a full node for additional privacy.
• Might come a little more expensive sometimes. Total costs are: Bitcoin on-chain fees (4 TXs), Monero on-chain fees (nearly zero), Bisq fees (trading costs).
• You're giving up bitcoin for an altcoin. Some may not like that, and if you keep it for a lot of time, there might be price fluctuations (which can be seen as an advantage too, as they randomize the swapped bitcoin amount).

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Comments appreciated.

Fellow citizen! 

Legislation is barely existent here. You can reach us in the Greek board for tax-related questions.

They won't. Take into account that arbitrarily tinkering with the block size limit would result in more reckless usage of the chain space. Meaning perhaps even more Ordinals, and more transactions in general.

It's usual phenomenon when hardware has to deal with lots of data, as in blockchain. There are limitations (read and write speeds), background processes that might interfere, the drive health as a whole. I think it might have to do with the architecture of the drive; Bitcoin Core doesn't work best on everything.

Then, don't use KYC, as long as it isn't illegal to do. You have no obligation to give up everything about you and your bitcoin to the government, which is exactly what you're doing when buying from a KYC-ed exchange. Buying peer-to-peer isn't illegal, and I guess it's reasonable to assume that in countries where bitcoin is taxed taxable, reporting your profit will create no problems at all.

You can still save the situation if you sell your KYC-ed coins back to the exchange and buy peer-to-peer.

Shouldn't that happen on a separated thread? Signature campaigns are one thing, and reviews are another.

After the coinjoins, every UTXO is non-KYC by definition. So, you can spend all the inputs to D.

If you used different Robosats identities, then coinjoining the inputs separately and then consolidating them into D is your best course. If you did use the same Robosats identity for acquiring both B and C, then your best course is to make two coinjoins, A, separately, and B with C followed by consolidation afterwards.

Speaking of future, how do you plan to do that? Is there one proposal which describes in detail how you can opt-in and out of a sidechain without federation needed?

Federations are decentralized in some sense. Liquid for example relies on the coordination of lots of companies. To formulate it better: they're distributing the centralization in various companies, probably with reputation as the primary consideration?

What do you mean you have the device entropy details?

When generating a private key, your computer collects entropy from various sources. Mouse movements, network activity, thermal noise etc. You can't just redo the process and expect to get the same entropy, because the entropy is dependent on beyond RAM and probably other hardware info. In fact, I think that preventing the recovery of an entropy is what the Cryptographically Secure Random Number Generator is trying to accomplish in the first place, for if it wasn't, other programs could work out your private keys.

This kind of coincidences is exactly why this video was made: Spooky Coincidences? (Vsauce classics, watch it)

There are really just tons of things to take into account about the 21m. It could be that, or the inevitable result of having havlings every once in 4 years, with 10 minute block interval and 50 BTC as first reward. Or if we were to interpret this spiritually, 42 is everything, so all bitcoins are "half" of everything.

Ideally, you never reveal that you're safeguarding your privacy. Achieving this demands an astonishing amount of resources, involving the scrutiny of internet activities for the majority of the population within a surveillance state, just to create an appearance of privacy protection. If you fail to take such measures, you'll be forced to relinquish your privacy and accept constant surveillance.

That's good, relatively to the example of being Tor-censored (and that's basically what the rest of the countries do). Okay, you want to be anonymous, you're put in a suspect list (if there's any such thing anyway). That is orders of magnitude different than prohibiting the access on Tor by default, because you're living under a "guilty until proven innocent" state; essentially, being guilty for not being monitored.

Correct.

Correct.

With the exception that using a mixer comes with some advantages over your service, and any other coinjoin service; cost and effectiveness. If there was an identical service available elsewhere where custody is not relinquished, then there would be no reason to opt for the custodial approach. But, in the case of coinjoin services which treat the currency as non-fungible, and fund the surveillance of the chain using coinjoin fees, I completely acknowledge the need for custodial such services.

Now this is the point where you reiterate the same misconceptions regarding effectiveness and how relinquishing your data negates the mixing purpose.  Just to preempt this, I am specifically referring to services that don't keep logs. Moreover, I am fully aware of the risk associated with placing trust solely in someone's reputation.

Except from the part where everyone can't coinjoin as there exist "naughty coins" which don't pass the zkSNACKs' approval? And the part where you're literally funding chain surveillance?

Again, you don't have the evidence to support that claim. You're completely ignoring the possibility that a mixer doesn't keep logs.

Says the person who's encouraging further surveillance by funding chain analysis and the adoption of "naughty coins", completely going against fungibility... 

Also, that "shitcoin" is currently having the biggest anonymity set that exists; it makes Wasabi coinjoins barely effective in comparison.

Where did you get that information from? Their Github repo is updated recently.

As a LineageOS user, I have to tell you that it's a lot better, even if you don't have privacy concerns as I do. The OS runs smoothly, there are no advertisements (as with Samsung and Xiaomi) in default apps, it runs faster etc.

I don't understand why I'm being called a paranoid here. I don't find neither Xiaomi nor Google trustworthy with my privacy. Both are data sharks, and both rely on personal data to survive. It makes no sense to trust their word that they don't spy the device, even if I haven't given the permission. They have quite an awful history with securing privacy.

They aren't privacy focused, but that's enough:

How would a sidechain be a true alternative to LN? A sidechain is a completely different currency, which happens to partly rely on the mainchain's currency, in just the order of transactions. Sidechains aren't pegged in both directions, as with lightning. You do have the option to buy 1 sBTC for 1 BTC, but you can't get your bitcoin back trustlessly if you ever want to leave the sidechain. At least not for RSK, I'm not aware for the policy of other sidechains.

No, I said that I don't want a closed-source Android, such as the one Pixels, Samsungs, Xiaomis, etc., have pre-installed. I very much like Android as an OS however, and there exist open-source alternatives like LineageOS and CalyxOS, which are Android-based.

Or be worried about both. Recording me without my permission is the worst, but recording what I type is another level of creepiness.

The keyboard isn't the sole problem. It's the lack of transparency that makes me think I carry a surveillance device everywhere. I can't put my phone away on everywhere I go.

I know, but nonetheless, necessary to communicate with my people.

I had never heard of that before. Seems like they're running this since 2018, as they say they were the first to release a deGoogled mobile OS. I don't know, from what I can tell, it doesn't differ much from the OSes that I have already mentioned.

I'm comfortable with knowing when and where they're spying. That's why I'm looking for a privacy-focused OS; so I can limit privacy permissions. What I'm not comfortable with is not knowing that my phone might be recording me when I have no application in the background, and when it's closed.

I hate Reddit, and because this community is very sensitive with privacy, I want some help regarding which mobile OS best fits my needs.

So, I recently stumbled across this paper, which describes how a deep-learning attack can be executed to de-anonymize you if smartphone is near the keyboard: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.01074.pdf. Their research shows that with the acoustic side channel attacks they've executed, there is 95% accuracy on phone-recorded laptop keystrokes. This means that even if you're running some super privacy-respecting software like Tails, if you're carrying a smartphone around you, there is chance that the closed-source Android OS can use VoIP and de-anonymize that little privacy square left.

As the icing on the cake, I'm interested in running a transparent, privacy-focused mobile OS to sleep easy. It has to fulfill the following criteria:

• It has to be Android-based.
• Has to have serious development (not a project that can be abandoned the other month).
• I will be able to have apps like Instagram, Messenger, Discord, and anything that uses micro-G. (and support notifications without problems)
• It needs to be open-source and privacy-focused.

I have concluded GrapheneOS, LineageOS and CalyxOS are what govern the space, but I'm quite lost to be honest. I want to read your thoughts on this.

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Edit: I tried GrapheneOS. Read: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5463809.msg63022282#msg63022282

That doesn't look standard though.

This is correct, and something I hadn't thought of. In order for the attack to pass, the miners have to agree that they will not be paid for every transaction in the candidate block. This is quite of a big disincentive already. Miners must share the fees equally to the work they've provided, otherwise the pool has no incentive to not arbitrarily lie about some, and take their income without explanation.