How to use bitcoins for very limited, single transactions?

[femplayer]

Hi: At this time, I want to use bitcoins only for making a yearly anonymous payment to a specific internet company, nothing more.

I've read about getting and securing a wallet, and a little about buying the bitcoins. My goal is to buy $50 to $100 worth of bitcoins and immediately (if possible) pay the annual fee.

I've searched these forums but results seem unrelated to doing anything bitcoin-related in a simple way. (lol)

Is there a simple way to handle an single annual transaction? And perhaps a step-by-step guide for doing it?

Thanks kindly for your help.

[nonbody]

Hi: At this time, I want to use bitcoins only for making a yearly anonymous payment to a specific internet company, nothing more.

I've read about getting and securing a wallet, and a little about buying the bitcoins. My goal is to buy $50 to $100 worth of bitcoins and immediately (if possible) pay the annual fee.

I've searched these forums but results seem unrelated to doing anything bitcoin-related in a simple way. (lol)

Is there a simple way to handle an single annual transaction? And perhaps a step-by-step guide for doing it?

Thanks kindly for your help.

do you want your payment to be automatic? if not why just pay the annual fee on your own, it would take less than 10 minutes

[femplayer]

do you want your payment to be automatic? if not why just pay the annual fee on your own, it would take less than 10 minutes

Maybe ongoing, but maily I want to stay anonymous. Only option to pay "on my own" is with credit card, which requires spilling my guts.

[shorena]

do you want your payment to be automatic? if not why just pay the annual fee on your own, it would take less than 10 minutes

Maybe ongoing, but maily I want to stay anonymous. Only option to pay "on my own" is with credit card, which requires spilling my guts.

Its hard to give advice without more information about what is possible, so I will just suggest something that comes to mind.

Buy bitcoins for cash by meeting with someone and give them the companies receiving address. That way you never even held the coins in your account, the TX never came from an IP address in any way associated with you, etc.

Depending on the company and how they accept bitcoin payments that might not be possible though. E.g. if you use bitpay, you have 10-15 minute window to issue the payment. That would require you to issue the payment durring the deal.

What you have to understand is that bitcoin is not anonymous per se. It requires a lot of effort to stay anonymous. It might be a good idea to tell us what you want to protect against. Is it someone from your family or the government?

[femplayer]

Its hard to give advice without more information about what is possible, so I will just suggest something that comes to mind.

Buy bitcoins for cash by meeting with someone and give them the companies receiving address. That way you never even held the coins in your account, the TX never came from an IP address in any way associated with you, etc.

Depending on the company and how they accept bitcoin payments that might not be possible though. E.g. if you use bitpay, you have 10-15 minute window to issue the payment. That would require you to issue the payment durring the deal.

What you have to understand is that bitcoin is not anonymous per se. It requires a lot of effort to stay anonymous. It might be a good idea to tell us what you want to protect against. Is it someone from your family or the government?

Thanks for the info. Yes, the government. I'm using a cloud storage/file fetching service and if I unwittingly stored copyrighted material, I'd rather no one with a supeana be able to track me to my door. The service has a very standard privacy policy, unlike VPNs who make an effort to protect client's privacy.

The only way to pay is via bitcoin or credit card. Even though my bitcoin purchase would be "public," so to speak, I wouldn't have to disclose my name and address to the service to pay them.

I begin to think I'm in the wrong place. You all are clearly wheeling and dealing. Should I just take my small potatoes and go home? Thanks.

[kpitti]

Its hard to give advice without more information about what is possible, so I will just suggest something that comes to mind.

Buy bitcoins for cash by meeting with someone and give them the companies receiving address. That way you never even held the coins in your account, the TX never came from an IP address in any way associated with you, etc.

Depending on the company and how they accept bitcoin payments that might not be possible though. E.g. if you use bitpay, you have 10-15 minute window to issue the payment. That would require you to issue the payment durring the deal.

What you have to understand is that bitcoin is not anonymous per se. It requires a lot of effort to stay anonymous. It might be a good idea to tell us what you want to protect against. Is it someone from your family or the government?

Thanks for the info. Yes, the government. I'm using a cloud storage/file fetching service and if I unwittingly stored copyrighted material, I'd rather no one with a supeana be able to track me to my door. The service has a very standard privacy policy, unlike VPNs who make an effort to protect client's privacy.

The only way to pay is via bitcoin or credit card. Even though my bitcoin purchase would be "public," so to speak, I wouldn't have to disclose my name and address to the service to pay them.

I begin to think I'm in the wrong place. You all are clearly wheeling and dealing. Should I just take my small potatoes and go home? Thanks.

May be it can help to just purchase Bitcoins. When you have them in your wallet - there is a way how to connect payment transaction to your wallet right?
Then you can use Mixing service as Bitmixer  . You will then pay from different address which if you use for example different wallet will be hard to trace to you.
Hope it helps.

[shorena]

Its hard to give advice without more information about what is possible, so I will just suggest something that comes to mind.

Buy bitcoins for cash by meeting with someone and give them the companies receiving address. That way you never even held the coins in your account, the TX never came from an IP address in any way associated with you, etc.

Depending on the company and how they accept bitcoin payments that might not be possible though. E.g. if you use bitpay, you have 10-15 minute window to issue the payment. That would require you to issue the payment durring the deal.

What you have to understand is that bitcoin is not anonymous per se. It requires a lot of effort to stay anonymous. It might be a good idea to tell us what you want to protect against. Is it someone from your family or the government?

Thanks for the info. Yes, the government. I'm using a cloud storage/file fetching service and if I unwittingly stored copyrighted material, I'd rather no one with a supeana be able to track me to my door. The service has a very standard privacy policy, unlike VPNs who make an effort to protect client's privacy.

The only way to pay is via bitcoin or credit card. Even though my bitcoin purchase would be "public," so to speak, I wouldn't have to disclose my name and address to the service to pay them.

I begin to think I'm in the wrong place. You all are clearly wheeling and dealing. Should I just take my small potatoes and go home? Thanks.

Mabye, maybe not. Lets assume - just in theory - you have copyrighted material and wanted to protect yourself against e.g. law enforcement. Firstly I would assume that already have something in place that allows you to communicate with the server anonymously, like Tor. Every time you do not mask your IP the government is able to tie the IP to your identity. If there is a reason to press charges they would easily get a court order. From what I read this is rarely the case for copyrighted material, its more common that private companies pursue these issues. Not every juristiction around the world is the same though and it does not really mater as they can easily get a court order to make your ISP reveal your name and address anyway.

Anyway, we assume you are familiar with Tor because of the given scenario. In this case its pretty easy to manage bitcoin anonymously. You only need a wallet that can work over Tor. The best choice is obviously bitcoin core as you do not rely on anyone else, but are part of the network. Bitcoin core will probably take a few weeks to sync over Tor, but you cant have everything. For more about the setup see here -> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tor Its a bit outdated, but the general idea is still the same. Start Tor, point bitcoin core to the local proxy provided by Tor.

A faster alternative would be to use Mycelium for Android. It can force a Tor connection and refuse to go online if it is not connected over Tor. You will need Orbot and enforce a VPN. This might result in problems with other apps, esp. Google Apps will give you a hard time for using Tor.

Another alternative would be to use a Tails live OS with Electrum 1.9.8. Electrum can also sync fast and you can probably memorize the 12 seed words for your wallet. Thus all bitcoin related information would be stored in your head or alternativly on a piece of paper.

Now to get bitcoin without leaving a trail go to a local meet up[1], ask if someone can sell you 50 $/€/£/¥/etc. worth of coins and let them transfer to an address of your you generated at home or on your phone via mycelium. Depending on how much you need you might have to let them know (e.g. via this board) that you are coming and want to buy a certain amount of coins. You will probably have to pay a premium, e.g. +10% of bitstamp/kraken/etc. is common, because those you buy the coins from will most likely transfer them to an exchange over the next few days and buy bitcoin from someone else. The premium is to mitigate the price risk as well as the efford.

You can also arrange a meeting via the board or other sides. Make sure the meeting place is public, there is no reason to meet in a shady part of town in the middle of the night. Buying bitcoin is not illegal (at least on most countries)

[1] or not so local depending on your paranoia level

[Mickeyb]

Its hard to give advice without more information about what is possible, so I will just suggest something that comes to mind.

Buy bitcoins for cash by meeting with someone and give them the companies receiving address. That way you never even held the coins in your account, the TX never came from an IP address in any way associated with you, etc.

Depending on the company and how they accept bitcoin payments that might not be possible though. E.g. if you use bitpay, you have 10-15 minute window to issue the payment. That would require you to issue the payment durring the deal.

What you have to understand is that bitcoin is not anonymous per se. It requires a lot of effort to stay anonymous. It might be a good idea to tell us what you want to protect against. Is it someone from your family or the government?

Thanks for the info. Yes, the government. I'm using a cloud storage/file fetching service and if I unwittingly stored copyrighted material, I'd rather no one with a supeana be able to track me to my door. The service has a very standard privacy policy, unlike VPNs who make an effort to protect client's privacy.

The only way to pay is via bitcoin or credit card. Even though my bitcoin purchase would be "public," so to speak, I wouldn't have to disclose my name and address to the service to pay them.

I begin to think I'm in the wrong place. You all are clearly wheeling and dealing. Should I just take my small potatoes and go home? Thanks.

Shorena's above advice is very good and very straightforward. You get the payment address where you need to send $100. You set up a meeting on localbitcoins.com and you set it up during a day in a local Starbucks (over there everybody have computers anyway so nobody will know what you are doing, not that you are doing anything wrong). You meet this guy, give him your address, he sends $100 worth of Bitcoin to this address (he doesn't even need to know that this is not your personal address). You drink an espresso until there is not 1 confirmation and you leave separate ways.

Done deal.

[Pursuer]

if your issue is not with buying bitcoin with your information, and you only want to send bitcoin anonymously you can cover your track.

this means that you buy bitcoin with your credit card, information or whatever. but then you use a mixer like bitmixer.io to mix your coins and cover your track. this way it is going to be nearly impossible to know the final bitcoin (in a new bitcoin address) belongs to you.

or instead of mixer you can use an altcoin. you exchange bitcoin with the altcoin (you can find a good one that provides you with additional anonymity, I don't remember any right now) and then exchange that altcoin to bitcoin again this way the chain between you and the final bitcoin address is broken and you will stay anonymous.

[femplayer]

Wow, thank you all for the great info! I've learned a lot. I think the Bitmixer method would be good enough for my needs, but I searched these forums about buying with a credit card and that seems virtually impossible to do safely. There do seem to be some nearby sellers I could meet up with, so I may pursue that. On the other hand, as someone who's not already "established" with bitcoins I see that "anonymity via bitcoin" is much more complicated than I'd imagined. Since big-time piracy isn't my goal, maybe lack of anonymity with this fetching service is ok. Anyway, thanks again.

[Talon]

the only way I can think of is doing a face to face transaction, buy you used your credit card to get cash as cash advance.

then paying cash and meet up with the person for btc. After that pay the credit card traditionally?

[pooya87]

i see people are suggesting buying bitcoin face to face. while in my opinion this is the best way of staying anonymous, it has some other kind of risks.
read this article: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-stolen-new-york-gunpoint-robbery/
while this is an obvious threat, it happens to people. so you should be extra careful when you want to do any trade like this.