Topic: Please critique this KYCed Bitcoin anonymization method. (Read 271 times)

Trezor model T and ledger hardware wallets are supporting monero last time I checked.
There are several software wallets, but one that looks a lot like Electrum is called Feather wallet.

Last I heard is that someone from Cake wallet team is working on forking Bisq exchange and they are calling it Haveno, but things are not moving very fast.
Telegram owner Durov recently announced they are working on their own version of decentralized exchange, but nobody knows how and when is that coming out.
There are no other real decentralized exchanges as far as i know, but LocalMonero, AgoraDesk and HodlHold als also working fine.

You can use the same onion address on Bisq for as long as you want. Your account will show an age, and you will also show your local reputation to other traders. You can delete this onion address at any time you aren't actively trading, which effectively wipes your account and makes you appear as a brand new user to the rest of the network.

Privacy and centralized exchanges do not go together in the same sentence. If you do anything with a centralized exchange, assume your privacy is zero, everything is being logged, and all those logs are being shared with third parties. Bitcoin to Monero is a good anonymization method if and only if you performs those trades peer-to-peer.

I don't understand why people keep touting BTC <=> XMR as an anonymization method. It is completely dependent on the exchanges to preserve your privacy.

If you are converting BTC to XMR on one exchange and then back again on another exchange, you have no way of knowing that both exchanges are not sharing customer information with each other including transaction history. That provides extremely poor privacy which law enforcement will have no problem peeling off. Please use a real mixer (like the one in my signature).

Yes; under Funds > Send Funds > Send funds from wallet.
The 'input selection' has the option to select between 'Use all available inputs' and 'Use custom inputs'.

Every proper wallet has a coin control feature; for instance, Electrum.

Didn't they store their adresses AND passwords in the cloud. I'm guessing they didn't even encrypt them before uploading. Makes me wonder how they were able to get all that crypto in the first place when they couldn't handle this rudimentary point.


Wouldn't this be remedied by saving the seed phrase from the git go?


Is that a feature in Bisq? I don't see it.


What wallet with this feature do you recommend?

Do you know that Bitcoin operates on a UTXO model where chunks of coins are constantly being created and destroyed by transactions and where it is sometimes trivial to trace particular coins from their birth to the most recent transaction? Coin control feature is usually provided by software such as bitcoin wallet in order for you to have the ability to somewhat influence the history of coins. Especially this feature becomes highly relevant when you are dealing with KYCed coins because coin control enables you to prevent the accidental merging KYCed bitcoins with non-KYCed ones. When sending a transaction, you choose carefully which chunks of Bitcoin to send (you label those chunks to remember who is who); coin control helps you keep anonymous and "named" bitcoins separately. Without proper coin control, the preservation of anonymity becomes a very tough task.

Oh... This is essential if you worry about privacy at all.
Yes. There is nothing to 'log back in'. There are no servers, therefore no 'accounts' on servers that you could log back into. The only accounts that exist are your fiat payment methods saved in your client, locally. Your coins are in your Bisq wallet. Local. It's just a local hot wallet.
Meaning if your local install dies, and you have no seed phrase backup, those coins are also gone.

Yes, but by sending all BTC at once you would be linking them (read above about coin control). Best would be to send each UTXO to Bisq individually and sell it for XMR individually; then you could consolidate the amounts in XMR and sell those XMR in 'one shot' for BTC again.

There are lots of options you can take, depending on what kind of anonymity you're looking for. If your coins have KYC on them (maybe from the same exchange even) but nobody else knows (i.e. never spent anything to buy goods etc.), it shouldn't make a difference if you link them when sending to Bisq in one go.

You could also CoinJoin the UTXOs using Whirlpool, then sell on Bisq.

With all of this, keep in mind this is more a 'hack' than a tailor-made privacy solution. What sounds good in theory, could go wrong when doing it in practice at a multitude of steps. Best would be to follow the KISS principle and use a system made for privacy, like CoinJoin or mixing.

Neither Bisq, LocalMonero, or RoboSats are designed to be used as mixing services. Blockchain hopping isn't the most effective way to anonymize your Bitcoin. The Bitfinex hackers tried to use this technique but investigators were still able to follow their transactions.

Whats that?

I lose the offer, ok. But i lose my coins? Wdym? I can't log back in for my coins?

So send all the btc one shot to Bisq. Convert all the BTC to XMR. Convert all the XMR to BTC (after some time). Send all BTC one shot to one wallet address??

One note regarding Bisq: it uses Tor by default and I recommend installing it once & keep using it.
Your 'account' age can increase the chances of getting an order accepted (quickly or at all) and increases your trading limits. There is no real privacy disadvantage in keeping using that account, as long as you perform coin control in the Bisq wallet, which you should do anyway; whether the Bisq install was 'freshly' made or not.

Since it uses Tor by default, you can run this on a non-live install without worries and less risk of losing funds (e.g. if the USB drive unplugs; poof: offer and funds are gone).

Robosats is a centralized (but anonymous) service; they can and probably do log stuff. Bisq is fully decentralized, i.e. there are no servers except the users' own computers, so nothing is logged outside of your own and your trading partner's machine.

Just go with Tor, and avoid all that trouble already.

Robosats allows you to create a new identity each time. I'm not sure about Bisq, but that's privacy focused as well. You connect to both via Tor. You don't have to create a buy order at Robosats with the exact amount you used in Bisq in your sell order (and as told, not during the same time!).

You have no idea! Pure torture!

Public computer. Also, wouldn't a VPN solve that?

So no 70/30? That's putting a lot of trust in the exchange of not logging.

You must be having a hard time quoting those posts, don't you? 

That's no doubt preferable than using a third party. The downside with running a node with IPv4/IPv6 is that you clear it out to your Internet provider, and to your neighbor nodes, that you run Monero full node, and you're therefore likely to own XMR as well.

They don't, but I wouldn't complicate it as much as you do. Just using an exchange to sell stuff, and another exchange to buy stuff is already an overdose.

Why, if I'm using a public computer with a public ip?

How would the steps in the method work out with only 2?

The one provided by the people who're responsible for its development obviously: https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/. Be sure to run your own node, and to not rely on third parties (for maximum privacy).

Haven't tried it, but aren't you satisfied already with 2? I think those are the best you can find. Bisq is the only true decentralized exchange (which operates in a transparent manner), and Robosats is a cool project which emphasizes in privacy, and which operates in a centralized manner with zero fees.

Can anyone recommend a noncustodial Monero wallet?

Also what about decenterlized exchanges besides Bisq, RoboSats and LocalMonero? Any thoughts on LocalMonero?

There aren't hundreds of thousands of 0.099 worth of bitcoin transactions made in that time frame. In fact, I doubt there are more than 10-20 being made in a day either.

There is. Bisq is known for high liquidity on XMR sellers and buyers.

I can absolutely recommend Robosats. It charged me 0 in fees.

Good point!

Can anyone confirm on there not being BTC/XMR on Bisq? If there isnt, then any alternative suggestions besides LocalMonero and RoboSats?

Are the fees percentages of the transaction amount, or is it a fixed rate? If it's a percentage, how much are we talking about?

But there must be hundreds of thousands of btc 0.099 transactions within the same time frame. But i get your point. Noted.

It is crucial. Think that if a chain analysis firm sees you disappear with either mixing, buying XMR etc. they'll try to figure out what's going on. The very next thing that I suppose they will do is some time analysis. If you mixed 0.1 BTC, and a few minutes later, another transaction that sends 0.099 is confirmed, then you give them hopes.