Coin Privacy Question...

[GarySeven]

I've used coin mixers in the past with good success but since a few wallets like Coinomi have built-in exchanges such as Changelly and CoinSwitch would a short-term exchange of BTC for say, Monero accomplish the same purpose of eliminating the visible trail of coin custody? If so, I would assume that the length of time spent in the alt-coin wallet could be minimal before being brought back to a fresh BTC address.

Any thoughts?

[20kevin20]

Depends on what your needs are and how you use the coins. If you've mixed some coins only to use them through exchanges, I don't think you've done anything to improve your privacy at all. You either go completely undercover or you don't. (personal opinion tho)

Coinomi is closed-source; Changelly is centralized. Switching from BTC to XMR doesn't help much if you don't take care of your privacy through XMR, although it's certainly harder to leak crucial information than it is through BTC.

If you use Changelly to get from BTC to XMR and back to BTC after a while, you'd use the same IP address for the exchange. Hence, you could do as many trades as you wish because your identity will still be leaked to Changelly - and I'm quite sure they do not allow Tor IPs (and even if they do, you may find your coins frozen for suspicious activity).

If I were you, I'd use solely open-source wallets with as least external connections as possible (for example, use full node rather than SPV) in combination with decentralized markets such as Bisq. Decentralized markets are slower and harder to use obviously, but it's worth it all in the end if you care about your privacy.

Other options include selling/purchasing from BitcoinTalk, although you should obviously take proper care and avoid scammers. I'd recommend using escrow.

One more thing I've heard about is BEAM. Their official wallet apparently has supposedly decentralized atomic swap ability. Never took my time to read some docs about it tho.