How to buy bitcoin anonymously

It doesn't matter how long ago you made the transaction or how small it was. Every transaction provides crumbs for others to start investigating you. The second thing you should understand is that you must practice good on-chain transaction habits to remain anonymous. These are important steps to keep you safe. Keep a detailed record of your addresses connected to an exchange with KYC and those which are private.

Never send any Bitcoin between the two. In fact, try to use your private Bitcoin as little as possible. The less information you provide, the harder it is for others to track you and create a report on you. Freshly mined bitcoin has no identifying metadata to associate it with a real identity. As long as that Bitcoin never moves to an exchange or other service provider that records KYC, IP addresses or other network metadata, it remains anonymous.

But it only takes one transaction to ruin this anonymity, so be careful. But if you don't want to go through the hassle of running miners and waiting a few years, then buying is the best way to go. Here is a list of the best ways to buy Bitcoin anonymously. In the early days of Bitcoin, there were no exchanges. The only way to trade Bitcoin for dollars was through person to person trades. People would meet up, hand over cash and then have Bitcoin sent to them. Today this is a risk enterprise. Criminals and other scammers take advantage of these situations to steal and rob buys and sellers.

Many P2P Bitcoin sellers refuse to do in-person transactions for this reason. Now, the best place to setup in-person P2P trades is through Paxful. However, when you want to sell, they require KYC. Simply enter in the amount you want to buy and choose your payment method. There are many different cash options to choose from, with in-person cash being one of them.

Ask an Expert

P2P trades like these often have huge spreads, meaning you will end up paying a significant amount more for the convenience of staying anonymous. These machines take your cash and send your Bitcoin instantly.

There are several thousand Bitcoin ATMs in the United States currently and you should be able to find one in every major city. As someone else noted, this is not the cheapest way to do things, but it is safer than meeting someone with cash. Another option is to use cash to buy a pre-paid Visa or MasterCard or American Express card from a supermarket or convenience store.

Then, create an account with an online exchange, and use the prepaid card to fund the account, then use the funds to buy bitcoins. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Learn more. How to buy bitcoins anonymously Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 9 months ago. Active 5 years, 3 months ago.

8 Best Ways To Buy Bitcoin Without ID (How To Buy Bitcoin Anonymously)

Viewed 12k times. Improve this question. Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous; transactions can be tracked and exchanges retain KYC information Image: Shutterstock. The know-your-customer KYC data held by cryptocurrency exchanges is a prime target for hackers, with several exchanges including Binance and Coinsquare having been hacked in recent years.

The July hack of Ledger's customer database led to victims receiving phishing phone calls and threatening emails from criminals trying to part them from their cryptocurrency.

How To Buy Bitcoins Anonymously

Anonymity keeps your Bitcoin safe, but it also keeps you and your personal life private. Bitcoin ATMs used to be less regulated than they are now. A second strategy is good old-fashioned physical meetings. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to reduce the digital footprint of your Bitcoin, including peer-to-peer exchanges, privacy-preserving browsers, and tumbling services available on the dark web. Also known as decentralized exchanges, peer-to-peer exchanges arrange trades directly between users, without the exchange itself holding any funds.

Firstly, consider using Tor , or The Onion Router. Tor obfuscates your online activity by sending your data to different servers, all of which are heavily encrypted. This makes it incredibly difficult but not impossible for someone to identify you. It is also important to use a VPN a virtual private network on top of Tor, just in case the first and last machines you connect to via Tor are owned by the same person.