Where To Buy Bitcoin Anonymously
Yes, you can purchase bitcoin without turning over your Social Security Number in the process. When you buy or sell bitcoin at an ATM, it will not be necessary to produce your SSN. Depending on the amount of the transaction, you may need to provide only your phone number, or you might need to supply your phone number and a photo ID. Either way, your SSN will not be involved in the transaction.
where to buy bitcoin anonymously
And, if you purchased that bitcoin at an ATM, you may have only needed to use your phone number to acquire the bitcoin, so your ID would not have been involved on that end of the process, either. Of course, you will not be able to use bitcoin anonymously in all applications, so it depends on how much you want to buy, what you want to use the bitcoin to purchase, and more.
Bitcoin exchanges, where you buy and sell Bitcoin, are often paired to your bank account in order to convert your money to Bitcoin as you buy it. And your bank account is obviously tied to your identity. Let's go through two different methods for taking your stores of wealth off the grid.
For those looking to anonymously buy it, simply selected a trusted vendor from the list of people able to sell you the amount of Bitcoin you want. They'll provide you with banking information and you make a cash deposit into their account. Once the transaction's confirmed, you'll usually receive your Bitcoins in a matter of minutes.
I'd probably use the first vendor, as his feedback shows over 100 completed transactions and a 100% positive rating. The description lists Wells Fargo as this person's bank, so at this point I'd go to a Wells Fargo with $100 cash and make a deposit into the vendor's account. As soon as it's confirmed, I have anonymously acquired Bitcoins in my LocalBitcoins account.
If you and I each put 500 pennies in a jar and shake it up, we can then remove 500 pennies each without knowing whose were initially whose. Bitcoin tumblers facilitate groups of people anonymously pooling their Bitcoins, mixing them up, and redistributing them back to the group, usually minus a small fee for the service.
Luckily for the privacy-minded, there are still ways to acquire bitcoin and other cryptos without doxxing yourself, several of which Rhodes described in her thread. CoinDesk looked into some options, which are described below.
However, with in-person cash trades, due to their informal character, there is no way to guarantee the other party will deliver their part of the deal (i.e., your bitcoin), unless you sign some kind of agreement (which might defeat the purpose of the whole thing by exposing your personal information) or buy from someone you trust (and the person might want to know and trust you, too).
However, over the years, bitcoin ATMs also became subject to regulations in some parts of the world, so if you choose this method you need to figure out if the ATMs available require ID verification to make a purchase or if they have other possible limitations.
For example, Genesis Coin ATMs in San Antonio, Texas, allow you to buy $20 to $500 worth of bitcoin using only your phone number. But if you want to buy more than that, you need an ID, according to the Coin ATM Radar website.
On the other side of the globe, the Kurant ATM network in Austria allows you to purchase up to EUR 250 ($286) worth of bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin or dash without ID verification, according to Coin ATM Radar.
There is a limited number of P2P marketplaces where users make deals directly with each other, rather than having bids and offers matched by an automated engine, as happens on big, centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. In other words, the P2P experience is more like Craigslist than Nasdaq.
To ensure both parties complete their part of the trade, P2P platforms like HodlHodl and LocalCryptos use smart contracts that lock bitcoin inside a multisignature wallet until the deal is complete, and release it to the buyer once the seller confirms a payment was made. LocalCrypto also offers markets in ether, bitcoin cash, litecoin and dash, while HodlHodl is bitcoin-only.
When there is a dispute and one user says the other one did not deliver their part of the deal (send fiat or release bitcoin), users can ask the platform to act as a referee. The buyer might provide proof of payment to show they held up their end of the bargain.
In the case of HodlHodl, the platform controls one of three keys to the multisignature escrow where bitcoin is stored for the duration of the deal. For each deal, the escrow is generated anew, with a set of three private keys: one controlled by the buyer, another one by the seller and the third one by the HodlHodl administrator.
Similar to bitcoin ATMs, Azte.co, which has offices in Santa Monica, California, and London, sells bitcoin vouchers via a network of vendors scattered across the globe. To buy a voucher, you need to find the nearest vendor on the Azte.co website, which might be a store, cafe or other business that partnered with the firm. Vouchers are sold and printed on the spot by cashiers. To redeem bitcoin, you need to enter your voucher code and your wallet address on the website.
There are more exotic ways to buy bitcoin, some of them easier than others. Eric Wall, chief investment officer of the crypto fund Arcane Assets, described his experiments buying bitcoin anonymously in a very instructive blog post in March 2020.
At this point, you can use some of the blockchain analytics tools available to retail users and check how risky your bitcoin would be considered by major crypto exchanges that use blockchain tracing tools.
Many people buy Bitcoin to send money around the world cheaply, unanimously and securely. Because the whole economy is virtual, cryptocurrency transactions come with very low fees compared to wire or bank transfers. Some people use Cryptocurrency for buying narcotics online anonymously. Others invest in Bitcoin on the volatile market with the hopes of winning big.
Though buying directly from Coinbase is convenient, the drawback is that this method is relatively expensive: Coinbase charges the greater of either a variable fee of around 0.5 percent, or a flat fee. The variable fees depend on where you are. For Canadians, the variable fees for buying through credit or debit cards are 3.99 percent. The flat fees are as follows: for purchases less than or equal to $10, Coinbase charges a fee of $0.99; for purchases between $10-25, $1.49; for $25-$50, $1.99; and for $50-200, $2.99.
The straight answer is yes, it is possible to buy bitcoin without ID in the UK and elsewhere in the world, however, we would generally discourage you from doing so. Why? Because buying bitcoin without any form of ID can be a legal grey area at best, and illegal at worst.
Law enforcement went to great lengths to trace the illicit funds, including tracking the stolen bitcoin through a complicated web of transactions spanning multiple countries. It took six years, but authorities eventually caught up. More recently, researchers have demonstrated traceability via unintentional patterns in bitcoin's transactional data -- the bigger a data set gets, the more patterns show up. And patterns can be identified and tracked.
Bitcoin has now caught on with mainstream investors, and this principle of private transactions has become much more precarious. If this financial activity can be traced, then cryptocurrency like bitcoin is more pseudonymous than anonymous.
Cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on a blockchain, which is generally public. At the same time, crypto trades are not necessarily linked to an identity, which provides a bit of anonymity for users. While there are select goods and services you can buy directly using bitcoin, in most cases it needs to be exchanged into local currency to actually spend it. And converting bitcoin into US dollars, a heavily regulated currency backed by the federal government, creates a distinct paper trail.
In order to turn bitcoin into dollars, you generally need to find a company that provides this service, such as a cryptocurrency exchange, a money transfer service or select banks. Companies like these usually abide by the "Know Your Customer" principles, which means identity verification is required to use the service. As Gordon said, "Regardless of how anonymous or pseudo-anonymous bitcoin is, the services that transfer bitcoin into dollars are not anonymous, and so therefore transacting it would not be anonymous in any meaningful sense."
Download Relai from the Play Store or App Store today to start buying bitcoin without ID verification today.
Buying Bitcoin anonymously is a good start to maintaining your crypto privacy, but there are many other things to consider as well. The internet is wide open for hackers and government agents, so if you want to ensure that your crypto holdings are anonymous as possible, read on.
An ideal way to pick up fresh Bitcoin without a trace is to buy them directly from a miner. Bitcoin miners have to sell some of their tokens from time to time, and newly minted bitcoins sometimes carry a hefty premium.
If you can find a miner who wants to monetize some of their freshly minted bitcoins (or any crypto for that matter), you could trade cash or other valuable items for them. There would be no paper trail, and the tokens you buy would have no transaction history.
All of this information has the potential to link you with bitcoin transactions, which makes using Bitcoin a whole lot less private. In the early days very few people understood much about the bitcoin platform, but that is changing rapidly.
Using the same browser for your general internet activities and bitcoin transactions is a bad idea. Depending on the kind of device and browser you use, there are different options to increase the level of security.
PayPal is one of the most widely accepted and preferred payment methods in the world. However, some regions still do not accept PayPal as a payment system. This is particularly the case in some developing countries where fraud has been a major problem. 041b061a72