Topic: Any Bitrefill experts here? privacy questions (Read 268 times)

Don't use your real address but instead use Amazon lockers for delivery.

I think Bitreffil has dedicated Amazon cards, and they accept Bitcoin and shitcoins, so you could easily use Lightning Network or some other coin to improve privacy (swap from BTC before purchase).
There is almost zero chance LN Bitcoin will get flagged by anyone as tainted, at least I never heard something like that.
I am not supporting any shitcoins but they can be useful temporary in situations like this, or when you want to save on fees.

Forget about idea of tainted coins, and don't purchase expensive items on Amazon.
If you are so concerned and privacy and tainted bs, than just purchase things with cash.

Of course it does. The coins are in escrow before any fiat transaction is made. If Bisq solved nothing as you claim, it would have collapsed due to endless scams years ago.

If I go to a merchant in person and pay with my non-KYCed bitcoin, or if I use my non-KYCed bitcoin to buy a non-KYCed giftcard which I then spend in person, how are the government going to track that?

Correct. When faced with some centralized service which is actively attacking bitcoin by proclaiming some coins as "tainted", the rational response is not to let them attach your KYC to all your coins and submit to their endless surveillance and invasion in to your life. The rational response is to not use such a service and instead use an alternative which does not do any of this nonsense.

That does come back to the question of 'what is abuse'?

Different places are going to have different levels and you will probably not know what they are till you hit them.

Using what I posted above, if you keep getting $50 Target gift cards and paying for the rest of your order in cash, then it's a non issue since they will never rally be able to find you or do anything about it.

If you add it to your target app and go though enough gift cards to take care of a small town that will probably raise some questions.

Where between those two things is where Target security goes in and takes a look?
You can obviously substitute Target for just about any physical store.

With online it's a different world since they do know where their products are being shipped and who is ordering them.

-Dave

I think you are  so much paranoid about it, but well everyone has his privacy policies.

For me nobody can catch you for buying some giftcards, i dont know how Amazon sell their gifcards to this third parties like bitrefill and also i dont know how much track them, but in the end if we suposs they know this card are from bitrefill you are undervalue the name itself. they are GIFTCARDS, so if any one comes to your door and say

- ey man that cards were brought with BTC/cryptos!

You can still say, so? some guys give the GIFTCARD as a GIFT, and GG. ITs not personally attached to you, no matter how much they try to say you buy them. Obviusly if you think you are a big fish and the IRS its behind you.... well that its another discussion.

So , if you use them sporadically i dont see any problem, but like all if you abuse them, well maybe someone can start to look from where you have that cards, etc.

I read some articles about the fact that most smartphones use various methods and show us advertisements based on that, but I don't doubt that this is the case with all other "smart" devices as well. Today's smart TVs are also real spy boxes, because every time they have a serious upgrade, you have to agree to a complete waiver of privacy and agree that all collected data is used by the manufacturer, but also by all those who will receive data from them. If you do not agree to the terms, you can no longer use the smart services of your TV.

I disagree with this analogy. When you pay with cash, the cashier just puts it in a box, they aren't put into an eternal immutable blockchain with all the details there to see, which would only require your dox attached to that transaction for a government to try to see what's up. Also everyone uses cash. If you have never had BTC in KYC exchanges, the gov does not have you as a "bitcoin person" on their records, so you don't want to be found using BTC to pay for stuff, specially since like I said before, there is a public blockchain that's immutable, they may start adding up amounts and wonder where it's coming from.


But the gov hates BTC, and as far as payments from sig campaigns, im not sure about the legal implications of promoting a mixer. The activity is definitely legal, since it's marketing, advertisement of a service, however im not sure if they'll like you promote mixers. As a best practice I would avoid any problems, and by that I mean not showing up with these coins on either KYC exchanges or building using services that go along with your dox on each payment. Also if you have other sources of income, it all adds up for taxes.

And also, if in the future BTC goes to 100k+ and you have coins you haven't touched for years and you want to buy a house or whatever, you are going to need to show up with these coins in a bank etc, you will raise alarms and get audited, in this situation, you would need to disclose your coin history and they would see you sent it to Bitrefill to pay for stuff. I guess if you stick to small purchases you could claim you didn't need to have that money taxed prior usage for payments, but with BTC I just know these guys hate you by default for owning any of it.

True though most of the corporate lies here. A few months ago, I was talking (with my wife) about buying toys for my kids and I was surprised to see advertisements online. We talked offline of course. Later I learned that I'm not the only one though as I said, few corporate people deny the fact that we have been getting tracked offline.

You don't have to be paranoid for that anymore, tech companies have been eavesdropping everyone for years now. Once in a while I notice advertisements about the thing I talked about earlier, and that's not from entering a search phrase.
On the other hand I'm fairly confident government here can't do it, most of their IT projects fail

The article you linked is from 2019, and the CEX in question is just playing a good guy, while at the same time they avoid doing business according to the rules and profit in billions without paying taxes. Most of the BTC that were seized from Silk Road were sold at auctions and, lo and behold, they are no longer taint because they were laundered by an agency with three letters


I've never had a problem with a transaction being rejected/frozen regardless of the fact that the coins were mixed, but I don't use CEX because I think they are more negative than positive overall. There are many ways to achieve privacy when it comes to the BTC you have in your wallet, but some things are not desirable to discuss publicly.

If you are worried about things like taxes, you think that someone is constantly following you, eavesdropping or something similar or you are too paranoid, then maybe Bitcoin is not for you, considering that you are turning a solution into a problem.

Exactly. There is no "privacy" when ordering something online to be delivered to your house.

If you're currently breaking the law, then indeed you'll have a problem.

If you have to worry about what a future government might do retroactively, you have bigger things to worry about than buying an Amazon gift card.

This depends on the level of investigation that may take place with you. If you was a "good citizen" and prepared your tax file, it is unusual for the authorities to conduct a deep analysis of the chain to find out where your money sources are. Also, payments from signature campaigns are less than $1,2000 annually, which is a small amount for anyone who wants to do an illegal activity.

Personally, I advise you to convert your bitcoin into cash and buy gift cards from the nearest store, or stop using Bitcoin until there is a clear legal framework for it (you will not have to pay taxes, and the law does not require a retroactive effect.)

There are a lot of paper money seized by the government. Aren't they in circulation? Or would you deny accepting paper money just because once they have been used by a terrorist or drug dealer? That's the same with Bitcoin. If you and everyone would deny accepting paper money just because the money have been used in drug dealing, paper money wouldn't exist. The same theory is getting a position in case of BTC, they are calling tainted BTC so at some point, people stop using BTC lol.
I found a reply from LoyceV which I really liked pretty much, I used to think same as you about BTC but it's not really the case.

Of course there are tainted coins. Try spending known Silk Road coins for instance. Also this: https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-returns-frozen-btc-after-user-promises-not-to-use-coinjoin

Mixing doesn't really solve anything since you get doxed to said coins when you do purchases. Honestly this sucks and sounded better on paper.

How do you guys promoting mixer coins spend your BTC? When the taxman asks for origin of the money I guess they wouldn't enjoy you promoted a mixing service, specially if you made money from ChipMixer which was closed, so not sure about that. I would be paranoid for instance, to spend ChipMixer related coins with Bitrefill or even put them on an exchange. And if nothing happens who knows in X years you end up in trouble. This is the problem with BTC, its not fungible. As far as I know, promoting on sig campaigns is legal since it's just marketing, but not sure when the promotion is a mixer. I wonder how people are using their money there. From what I've seen they do nothing with it but hoard it. As far as P2P, I don't trust people in real life, you never know who you are meeting with, and Bisq doesn't solve anything as far as fiat transactions, you are risking it the moment you do a bank wire.

Using Amazon as an example, if you are using giftcards there you also must provide a 'back up' funding source in case the giftcard turns out to be fraudulent.
There are plenty of cards you can use from Bitrefill that you can stay anonymous with.
But if you are going to have something shipped to you, no matter what you are giving up that.
If you are using Amazon, you would have to give up a bit more since they do want that 2nd payment method.

Walking into Burger King or Taco Bell or Home Depot or Target or a host of other places and using a gift card from them you are still mostly anonymous.
So long as you pay for the rest of your order in cash.

Adding it to their app so you can order ahead...well then you have no privacy anyway.

-Dave

1. As far as I know you will eventually need to do KYC on bitrefill if you keep on using it. Also, according to their terms, they might ask you to do the KYC anytime they wish. So your first transaction might get flagged (its going to happen if they know you used a mixer) and you might have to pass the KYC to continue using their services.

2. Yeah, if you use the card on your amazon account, they will eventually get your details, so they can trace you and your coins. But there is no way to certainly know who bought the coins. What if someone bought the cards for someone else?

Yeah, the alternative solution might work, but for only some cards. Like you can buy a walmart gift card and use it on a self checkout machine. They don't ask any information about the customer.

If you are worried about tainted coins to use on buying gift cards on Bitrefil there is another way to buy products privately on Amazon without an account.
Have you heard of purse.io?

If not, it would be a great option to buy products available on Amazon. And they also have discount compared on buying gift cards.

There are plenty of mixers available in the market. Go to the service announcement board and find one. Would recommend using Yomix which I'm using at my sig, not a vouch of course. DYOR.

It's false. I was also in the wrong sense but thanks to LoyceV, after a huge long discussion, I'm now convinced that there's no tainted bitcoin like there's no tainted fiat. You never know whether the fiat you are using is from a terrorist or not. What you know is the fiat is accepted by your govt and that's it.

You can try coinjoin too.
By the way, for maximum anonymity, there is only this option for you:
1. Use mixer or coinjoin or exchange between different currencies, like exchange BTC to Dash and then buy Amazon Gift Card via dash. It will be best if you are able to exchange bitcoin into monero and buy Amazon Gift Card via Monero. You can use BISQ exchange for high privacy.
2. Use Amazon locker. You can easily confirm your mobile number by buying online mobile number anonymously or if an amazon locker is not an option for you, then use freight forwarder company, idk where you live and if there are any local FW companies. Be sure that they let you to pick an item via locker without ID verification.
That's all.

You could use Tor I guess, but there's probably no need for using  Proton email. You can buy gift cards from Bitrefill or other gift providers without using an email (unless you're looking to buy large amounts).

As for the second scenario you mentioned, then I find it to be a bit unrealistic. Sure, you could be buying these cards for yourself, but you could also be buying them for someone else who happens to be a non-crypto user. The government has no way to prove either.

If you're that worried then I think you could also exchange your crypto to fiat (P2P obviously) and then buy gift cards using the fiat.

Is bitcoin legal in your country or is it forbidden or do you not want to do this to avoid paying bitcoin taxes or for your privacy?

Financial services do not do deep analysis on chain unless you are required to file criminal cases or there is a judicial investigation against you, so as long as you can prove the source of the money, use a Minxing service or Whirlpool with Tor and run a full node using Tor is good to break the link between your inputs and outputs.

Buying physical cards or from legal sources will reduce the risk and do not buy cards from unreliable parties as they can be obtained illegally.
Here, it is true that you have broken the link between you and cryptocurrencies, but buying these cards may link your Amazon account to hacker groups or theft, which is a much greater risk.

Could someone explain what are some best practices for maximum privacy?

If you were to want to use it on Amazon, what would be right steps?

Im assuming you want to create a Bitrefill account with Tor, use a protonmail account created with Tor, and mix your coins properly before you send the money (which mixer?)

The problems I see:

1) When you mix coins, you may get tainted coins
2) No matter how many steps you take to keep your privacy, it all ends up in a doxed situation (your Amazon account, which contains your full name, address, and contact info) so what's the point? Im sure Amazon keeps that data. If you ever had a financial review by a government, or in the future the government became increasingly tyrannical about cryptos and he was to force either Bitrefill or companies that accept to have their giftcards filled through Bitrefill, to disclose this information, the government would know that you have or have had Bitcoin, this is a problem.

An alternative would be to use this only for physical redeeming codes or something like that. I've heard this can be done. But again, how do we know the physical shop we go into will not ask any information when you use such codes? Which would link the usage of the code with your dox. And if you mix your coins and end up with tainted coins, or someone that paid you had tainted coins whether they knew or not, you will be the one that gets doxed while using said tainted coins and you don't want that. This is why im not sure if using Bitrefill is a good idea.

Could someone elaborate on this?