Withdraw from all KYC services you use directly to Wasabi or Joinmarket. Otherwise you are pointlessly adding to the normal risk that comes with KYC over an easily applied level of protection.
Fees are super low too.
Discussion
Seems like withdrawing via lightning, where available, is even better. Or am I missing something?
This is much preferable, yes.
For sure but lightning privacy is bad on the receive side (hoping trampoline payments become normal, like lightning VPNs), its lightning *sending* that has incredible privacy.
thoughts on using lnproxy?
its less than optimal but maybe an option.
Perhaps even submarine swap, lightning to boltz to your on chain address. Though this may also be flagged as high risk.
Doing this is a great way to get your KYC account blocked.
They will be able to tell you're coinjoining. They will deem you high-risk, and they will deplatform you.
That's fine, then you've got your bitcoin off the service and you can find one that doesn't suck, imo. I pay from my CJs directly to Fold without issue. And River has not problems sending them to it.
Different institutions and jurisdictions diverge in how far they are along the path to total financial tyranny.
The problem of course, is that the breadcrumb trail is eternal, so it is a safe bet that this will come back to bite you in the ass.
Also, remember that getting your account closed at even one institution over "money laundering" concerns (aka privacy) could spell doom for all your other accounts as well, since, well, you are identified, and there are backend systems and arrangements in place to share this information.
Be careful out there.
Then they force me to go on a full bitcoin standard and i have to live entirely off of lightning. And ill simply bite the bullet and do that. i'm more worried about my *lack* of privacy coming back to bite me in the ass when i have had to use certain KYC services at times.
Also like you said, it definitely matters what jurisdiction you are in.
I'm all for a pure bitcoin (and in my case, monero) standard, setting aside for the moment the fact that neither could scale as they exist today to accomodate for that.
Unfortunately for the moment it's a pipe dream, except in certain small communities around the world, although the situation is improving slowly over time.
Meaning that unfortunately at some level, if one is entirely in crypto, it will be very hard to avoid using some KYC service of some sort.
At which point, I agree, it is essential to safeguard one's own privacy, because to not do so is to put oneself at potential great risk of harm (and also, it's none of their business).
I share your concerns around privacy (and anonymity), there is perhaps an argument to be made over legitimate concerns around source of funds at times, but clearly then ideal equilibrium is not "record every transaction of every amount forever and if any privacy tool was used along the path it must be money laundering", which seems to be the direction we've been heading towards for awhile.
This unfortunate path has been greatly expedited by the normalization of transparency in blockchains, in my opinion. It was already well underway, but a public eternal record of every transaction really sped that along.
Nevertheless, the solution is not only technological. Once upon a time financial privacy was a given, and respected, and it took great effort backed by strong suspicious to break it.
Nowdays it's casually broken pretty much every second of the year. The consequences are dire indeed.
Perhaps one day there will be enough of us spread all over the world, with enough wealth, power and influence, to restore this basic human right to its rightful place.
I’m pretty sure that’s why I was kicked off Robinhood. Ended up being for the best, but just a heads up to anyone else. What are your thoughts on withdrawing using lightning and then sending to a liquid wallet using a nostr:nprofile1qqsqcdcltmv4qanpx3p7svcufdsg9rkk00x7l2sknra4e6whkv59l7clgcdzj swap? Comparable level of privacy?
How many joinmarket transactions until you’ve efficiently obscured your identity?
this is indeed the problem.
afaict there is no good way for an end user to measure the anonset of these tools.
(assuming you trust the maker or coordinator in the 1st place)
Another reason why non kyc on 2nd and 3rd chains just seems superior. Fuck kyc.
it depends doesn't it
like we're in a situation now of trying to measure LN privacy
and because its not a homogeneous thing it ain't easy.
like prove to me your routing node isnt spying on you?
for ecash, ok we can know for sure.
but custodian trade-off 😕
its not an easy fix
What about liquid?
A little more nuance for how to protect yourself, but it's a good option too. Amounts are completely hidden but UTXO chains aren't.
nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpw08v4rt5pj9dmfsrk0990zflfywwznt7g5zheap4eefgasjqg7uqyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qqsyexhc45ljwsxy8z9ta80hkuvas38gc6e79t297282uxssn2yfnrgdkk4ya
Always numerous options, liquid is good especially if you purchase directly onto liquid. Then there is also hodlhodl and robosats to avoid KYC altogether.
Depends on your level of concern and who you are trying to protect from. My main goal is to just get a simple amount of separation from my stacking addresses and when i pay to the people or companies i work with.
Thoughts on using Liquid for privacy?
Good option, but a little trickier since you have to use a swap service. But definitely a viable route.
Liquid is traceable, just the assets & amounts are hidden - but not the addresses.
A transaction graph can and will be built from that.
One thing to consider: doing this could make you a target for the state if and when it realizes it needs to confiscate more sats to survive.
how does an end-user know what privacy was gained with either of these CJs?
As some have noted, depending on your jurisdiction, you should probably do a hop through a normal wallet *before* you do this because some services and governments are tyrannical assholes who will just shut your account down.
Does wasabi still coinjoin?
not as a service. there's configuration in wallet software now to use other third party coinjoin coordinators
seems like terrible advice, if you want to continue buying there, send to a diff wallet first at minimum.. (not direct)
Yeah probably don’t do this.
Coinjoining KYC coins makes absolutely no sense.
You only gain forward privacy which is not the issue with KYC. The issue of KYC is that your personal information is connected to a Bitcoin purchase and stored in a database which can (probably will) get in the hands of criminals and encroaching states.
Nobody will care about coinjoining or your "boating accident" story. The only way to get rid of that issue is to sell those coins at the same place you bought them.
But daddy may not let me sell my coinjoined sats later, I have to make sure he can trace everything 🤡
The British are coming!
I was in the process of learning coin joins the same week that Samourai got taken down and then Wasabi announced they were going to stop doing it. It was expensive and time consuming, and then with all the heat coming down on it I decided it wasn’t even worth the trouble until better alternatives get developed.
is it ok to send SATs from a custodial Lightning wallet to a Non KYC, non custodial ?
should be anonymous UTXO, no ?
Yeah it would be best to be non-custodial because the payer has all the information about the wallet and node that is receiving on lightning.
Lightning has fantastic *payer* privacy, but bad *receiver* privacy, currently.
But Wasabi will split my phat KYC UTXO into small chunks, right? Certainly, has its negative side to it if we get to a high fee environment.
True, but its best to do it with large pools of funds.
ie. payment privacy for like $100 to $200 is easy on lightning, but if you have savings of like $30k, you should CJ it and only send to payment wallets or pay out to others in smaller batches. Yes this adds to UTXOs, but not to an extent that should be a problem in the next decade. $10 to move $10K is cheap.