I want to increase my bitcoin spending privacy

[Oshosondy]

I have been thinking of ways to improve my bitcoin spending privacy, I have known little about transaction output that are not spent but back to my wallet change address, I am thinking if this can be tracked on blockchain explorer, it will be very easy for hackers tracking my wallet to easily know many of my bitcoin address. I have been thinking of using mixers, but I do not know about their fee, I do not want to pay much for fee, I also know about wasabi wallet but I need enlightenment about the fee too, I am even thinking to make use of anonymous coins like dash, zcash or monero but the fee to convert to them and from them back to bitcoin are high for me. How can I increase my bitcoin spending privacy and yet using low fee payment.

[Little Mouse]

It’s easy to trace you if you have shared your bitcoin address with someone. They can easily check where BTC is going, from where BTC is received etc. To leave the trace, you can use mixer.
With ChipMixer, there’s no fee or little fee. Actually, it’s like pay as you want. Check out their site, be aware of phishing sites.

[bitmover]

I have been thinking of ways to improve my bitcoin spending privacy, I have known little about transaction output that are not spent but back to my wallet change address, I am thinking if this can be tracked on blockchain explorer, it will be very easy for hackers tracking my wallet to easily know many of my bitcoin address. I have been thinking of using mixers, but I do not know about their fee, I do not want to pay much for fee, I also know about wasabi wallet but I need enlightenment about the fee too, I am even thinking to make use of anonymous coins like dash, zcash or monero but the fee to convert to them and from them back to bitcoin are high for me. How can I increase my bitcoin spending privacy and yet using low fee payment.

Using a mixer, like suggested by Little Mouse will certainly improve your privacy. But soon you will be using those coins again and you will have to clean them again.

It is also important to understand how addresses get connected to each other, and how to prevent that.

First of all, I suggest that you use a wallet that has a function usually called Coin Control. The best option is Electrum.org wallet (I don't know if Wasabi has that function).

If you care about your privacy, you should always check from what address you want to send your coins from.

For example. do you send often BTC to the same person/store? Do not let your wallet manage your addresses for you. If you do, your wallet will automatically send coins from many different addresses, and that person will get to know all your bitcoin addresses in just a few transactions.

The best approach is to check which addresses were already compromised to that person, and just use addresses which are already linked to them.

The same with exchanges.

You don't need to use privacy coins just to have a decent privacy. You can achieve that using bitcoin and some knowledge.

[mk4]

Coinjoin programs such as Wasabi Wallet and Samourai are definitely great, but they cost quite a bit in fees. If you don't like paying fees(besides transaction fees), then mixers like ChipMixer are the way to go; whereas you can pay whatever fee(or donation) you want.

P.S. Even if hackers can track your funds, they can't do anything with it anyway; unless they have control over your wallet's private keys. Heck, you can track Binance's[1] cold wallet that contains 90,000+ BTC. But you can't do anything since you don't have the private keys anyway.

[1] https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo

[Viscore]

It's really costly to use a mixer, you should be ready to spend for the fee if you want to increase your privacy.

However, if you are transacting a decent amount, I think fee for mixing is just reasonable.
Hackers by the way will not target you if you will use a wallet that is not known to the hacker, you can create different wallet if you want, use electrum and make as many wallet as you want as long as you keep the seed properly.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The best approach is to check which addresses were already compromised to that person, and just use addresses which are already linked to them.

A better approach is to never use the same address twice.

Personally, I find the most difficult thing is dealing with multiple small change outputs without just creating a single big consolidation transaction and thereby linking them all together and compromising your privacy. There are multiple ways you can deal with this. Carefully choosing UTXOs to avoid change altogether is one, perhaps linked with buying slightly more goods or services so get closer to an UTXO you have to spend, or just rounding the fee up by a few thousand extra sats. If you use ChipMixer, it becomes very easy to withdraw chips in any multiple of 0.001 BTC and leave the rest of your balance behind to spend at another time. If you are going to create change, then you can redirect it to an address type the same as the address you are paying to obfuscate which output is change, or you could just redirect it directly to a ChipMixer deposit address. Or if using Wasabi, you can include multiple change outputs in to a coinjoin.

[Oshosondy]

...

About coin control, thanks for sharing that, this is the first time I am hearing that. I will check my electrum wallet to see how it works.

P.S. Even if hackers can track your funds, they can't do anything with it anyway; unless they have control over your wallet's private keys. Heck, you can track Binance's[1] cold wallet that contains 90,000+ BTC. But you can't do anything since you don't have the private keys anyway.

There was a image I saw recently on this forum, that makes me want to have privacy because mistakes can happen, I want privacy in a way my bitcoin will be difficult to tracked to many addresses whereas I am using many addresses, because a single leak can be a problem when the blockchain explorer is available to all. You are very correct and I gained from your comment.

It's really costly to use a mixer, you should be ready to spend for the fee if you want to increase your privacy.

Check above, nobody disputed chipmixer to be free but you can pay what you like. Try to use chipmixer as I have been advised if you are using paying ones.

[bitmover]

A better approach is to never use the same address twice.

Personally, I find the most difficult thing is dealing with multiple small change outputs without just creating a single big consolidation transaction and thereby linking them all together and compromising your privacy. There are multiple ways you can deal with this. Carefully choosing UTXOs to avoid change altogether is one, perhaps linked with buying slightly more goods or services so get closer to an UTXO you have to spend, or just rounding the fee up by a few thousand extra sats. If you use ChipMixer, it becomes very easy to withdraw chips in any multiple of 0.001 BTC and leave the rest of your balance behind to spend at another time. If you are going to create change, then you can redirect it to an address type the same as the address you are paying to obfuscate which output is change, or you could just redirect it directly to a ChipMixer deposit address. Or if using Wasabi, you can include multiple change outputs in to a coinjoin.

I think it is not better  but complementary approach.

Let's suppose you never reuse addresses, but if you dont use coin control feature you won't be able to decide which address to share.

Let's suppose you are going to buy a 50 usd gift card in bitpay. You have the following addresses:
Addrsses 1 - you just bought 50000 usd in an exchange for long term,
Address 2 - you have 200 usd from signature campaigns  but you dont want to share your username
Address 3- money to buy gift cards

If you do not use coins control  you may end up sending 50 usd from your 50000 long term address to bitpay. Or you may end up sharing your bitocintlak username with them.

Whoever cares about privacy, coin control is a must.

[webtricks]

...

About coin control, thanks for sharing that, this is the first time I am hearing that. I will check my electrum wallet to see how it works.

Coin control is not a standard term for a feature, it refers to the control on UTXOs to be spent in a transaction. It's pretty easy to manually select UTXOs in Electrum.  Select 'Coins' from the menu. Click the outputs to want to spend, right click and click 'Spend'. Now simply go to 'Send' tab and only selected outputs will be used as inputs in the transaction you create.

[bitmover]

Coin control is not a standard term for a feature, it refers to the control on UTXOs to be spent in a transaction. It's pretty easy to manually select UTXOs in Electrum.  Select 'Coins' from the menu. Click the outputs to want to spend, right click and click 'Spend'. Now simply go to 'Send' tab and only selected outputs will be used as inputs in the transaction you create.

You are right, this is not a standard name.
I searched about it, and it came from bitcoin core


https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/37486/what-does-bitcoin-cores-coin-control-features-do-and-how-do-i-use-it

In electrum, it works just like you said.

You can see the interface below

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-spend-specific-utxos-in-electrum/

[o_e_l_e_o]

I think it is not better  but complementary approach.

Sure, you still need to use coin control, but it is still bad practice to reuse addresses.

You said in your first post just to use addresses which are "already compromised" to a given service. This is poor advice for a couple of reasons. You allow any person or service who deposits coins to one of these "compromised addresses" to track all your deposits from other people or services who send you coins to the same address. You allow anyone with knowledge of that address to track and link all your deposits from different sources, and also to track all your payments from that address and see exactly how much you are spending with that particular merchant.

Much better to keep separate addresses for each transaction which would mitigate all of these issues.

[ranochigo]

You can't have privacy if you're not actively looking out for it. ChipMixer is not sufficient. If you were to use an SPV wallet like Electrum, the server will know the addresses which belongs to you. Spending the funds from ChipMixer on Electrum will still leak your IP address if you're using an SPV wallet or if you're not using a dedicated proxy/tor session. If you're using Electrum, unless you're running your own server, there would be no privacy whatsoever.

If you want to have some privacy without having to run Bitcoin Core, you'd probably have to use Wasabi wallet which has a built in CoinJoin. The fees depends on the anonymity set but should generally be below about 1%.

[tranthidung]

If you care about your privacy, you should always check from what address you want to send your coins from.

Also, it is not common to spend all amount in chosen UTXOs that results in the reason to use changed addresses for leftover amount.

Spending the funds from ChipMixer on Electrum will still leak your IP address if you're using an SPV wallet or if you're not using a dedicated proxy/tor session. If you're using Electrum, unless you're running your own server, there would be no privacy whatsoever.

In addition: Checking transactions without Tor can leak IP addresses. The companies who create and run block explorers can collect and sell your IP addresses to other parties.

In most cases, the real owners of address and transactions are the ones who often check that transactions with block explorers, not strangers. The blockchair.com explorer built their tool with Privacy score, it is a good tool to assess privacy score for transactions. The adverse effect is if you check it without Tor, your privacy is reduced as IP address is leaked.

[20kevin20]

Privacy on Bitcoin fully depends on how precautious you are. If you really want and need to go anonymous, I honestly recommend considering Monero as well.

The thing about Bitcoin and privacy is, the blockchain is public. That means that if someone ever gets to crack or exploit CoinJoins or Mixers, all your past history will be revealed. If you are using one of them, be careful about mixing non-anonymized coins with anonymized ones. If you need privacy on BTC, you have to be extra paranoid since everything is recorded on a transparent ledger..