For a long time a lot of services were free to use without any type of personal information. BTC-E had a daily withdrawal limit of 100BTC before they were shut down, a limit which they had for several years and it worked just fine.
I miss these old times.... I'm sure that if BTC-E was still up and running and continued with their non KYC service, it would be one heck of a popular exchange today. Government agencies are the real criminals. That's a fact.