kugelblitz said:
Rolltide61 said:
kugelblitz said:
J.Ayden said:
jsc1980 said:
If this reads as snarky, my apologies up front, but I'm not sure why folks get so worked up about crypto.
Step 1. Open an exchange account (plenty of options out there, so go with whichever you like). KYC hoops will likely be involved, though that's on the government, not crypto.
Step 2. Open a separate non-custodial wallet (Trust, Exodus, etc.).
Step 3. Make the purchase on the exchange
Step 4. Move it to that other wallet
Step 5. Forward it to the vendor
For my part, I tack on a few extra steps to make following the transactions/wallets a bit tougher, but that's just leftover habits from my younger years. Even with those added steps, none of it is all that difficult if you simply sit down and handle one step at a time (imo). And yes, fees pop up sometimes. Same as buying anything online comes with fees, taxes, etc. You're not paying sales tax, so just treat those fees as the crypto tax.
The main things to remember are (i) don't crap where you eat (aka don't send from the same wallet you used to purchase because that is tied to your funding source and could have repercussions) and... nope guess that's it.
No, you're not being snarky at all — I genuinely appreciate the help.
If I've already got Robinhood for crypto, is there any point in opening a second exchange account? If there is, I'll go ahead once my ID is updated. If there isn't, I'd prefer to keep using what I already have rather than adding yet more apps.
I believe I've worked out the remaining steps. What still trips me up is
why it actually matters whether you send from the same account you bought on, since every account remains linked and directly traceable to you anyway. I get why people advise against it, I just don't see what the real consequences would be beyond having the account closed — and that's exactly why I picked up Exodus, since I never intended to keep money sitting in it long term. Is the worry that bank accounts could get closed too? Or is it just that it would be obvious it's you doing the buying? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm honestly curious. Because if that's the concern, then it seems like no matter how many hoops you jump through... it's still obvious who's making the purchase, since every account is in your name. I can't speak to other wallets, accounts or exchanges, but Exodus asked for my SS, and Robinhood may have too — though I've had that account so long I don't even recall.
Being in Oregon, I already avoid sales tax lol. Nothing I order online gets taxed either, so I forget that (most of) the rest of the country deals with it. Still, thanks for the reminder — sincerely. I think that's partly why fees bother me. I'm used to paying just the listed price, unless it's something like a delivery app.
A self-custody wallet is what you ought to be using — not yet another KYC exchange.
That means the route looks like this: KYC exchange -> self-custody wallet (used once, or at minimum reserved for grey market activity) -> vendor.
Why bother? It hands your KYC exchange a legal fig leaf, and it makes it harder for the feds to build a credible accusation against you.
If you send payment to your vendor straight out of your KYC exchange account, that platform keeps a permanent, unalterable record of you engaging in something that isn't fully legal. Later on, once the political winds shift and the feds hand them a list of accounts that paid a pep vendor, you're finished. Keep in mind: the blockchain never forgets.
Route it through an intermediate self-custody account instead, and if anyone raises a question you simply say the crypto went to a friend and how that friend spent it isn't your problem. Now the feds have to establish that the self-custody account belongs to you — and as long as you keep quiet, they can't.
Beyond that, you can wipe out the connection between yourself and the peps without much effort. You buy KYC coins, convert them into Monero (also called XMR, a fully privacy-encrypted coin), and then convert that into whatever coin the vendor accepts.
To anyone inspecting later, your coins just disappear into the void that is XMR; on the vendor's side, anyone looking at their wallet sees coins arriving from that same void. That's my own method, and it's what everybody ought to be doing — but getting people to stop sending coins from KYC accounts to vendors is already an uphill fight, so one problem at a time.
Could you go into more detail about that? I find it really interesting.
Monero (XMR) is a privacy coin where every transaction is encrypted. As with any cryptocurrency, the chain itself is open to view, but what's recorded on it stays encrypted. That means an observer cannot determine the sender, the receiver, or the value transferred by examining the ledger. An investigator could at most conclude that you interact with Monero, and that alone isn't against the law. Privacy isn't optional on Monero the way it is on some other coins that offer such features — it's always on and can't be switched off. A useful side effect is that it's difficult to slip up in a way that exposes your identity.
For someone doing investigations, a coin that has been converted into Monero effectively vanishes. No technique is currently known that can completely de-anonymize Monero's users. A motivated adversary might have ways to weaken Monero's privacy somewhat, but pulling that off takes difficulty, complexity, expense, and a great deal of time and work. On transparent chains — which is what most other coins use — the same task is easy: you simply check the address.
The procedure goes like this: purchase any coin that requires KYC (for my part I go with LTC or BCH, though the choice doesn't matter). After that, visit a swap service and trade your KYC coin for Monero. To compare rates across services, an aggregator like
https://orangefren.com is useful. No account is needed; the service simply provides an address for you to send funds to, and you specify where your Monero should go. After you hold Monero, tracing the money becomes impossible for anyone. Suppose the swap service gets seized along with all its data — the most that reveals is that you use Monero, which isn't illegal. Having Monero, paying with it directly would be best, yet the majority of pep vendors handle OPSEC poorly and won't take it, which is maddening; still, you can run it through a swap service once more to obtain whatever coin the vendor does accept.
If you follow this route, proving you ever purchased peps becomes impossible.
J.Ayden said:
kugelblitz said:
J.Ayden said:
jsc1980 said:
If this reads as snarky, my apologies up front, but I'm not sure why folks get so worked up about crypto.
Step 1. Open an exchange account (plenty of options out there, so go with whichever you like). KYC hoops will likely be involved, though that's on the government, not crypto.
Step 2. Open a separate non-custodial wallet (Trust, Exodus, etc.).
Step 3. Make the purchase on the exchange
Step 4. Move it to that other wallet
Step 5. Forward it to the vendor
For my part, I tack on a few extra steps to make following the transactions/wallets a bit tougher, but that's just leftover habits from my younger years. Even with those added steps, none of it is all that difficult if you simply sit down and handle one step at a time (imo). And yes, fees pop up sometimes. Same as buying anything online comes with fees, taxes, etc. You're not paying sales tax, so just treat those fees as the crypto tax.
The main things to remember are (i) don't crap where you eat (aka don't send from the same wallet you used to purchase because that is tied to your funding source and could have repercussions) and... nope guess that's it.
No, you're not being snarky at all — I genuinely appreciate the help.
If I've already got Robinhood for crypto, is there any point in opening a second exchange account? If there is, I'll go ahead once my ID is updated. If there isn't, I'd prefer to keep using what I already have rather than adding yet more apps.
I believe I've worked out the remaining steps. What still trips me up is
why it actually matters whether you send from the same account you bought on, since every account remains linked and directly traceable to you anyway. I get why people advise against it, I just don't see what the real consequences would be beyond having the account closed — and that's exactly why I picked up Exodus, since I never intended to keep money sitting in it long term. Is the worry that bank accounts could get closed too? Or is it just that it would be obvious it's you doing the buying? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm honestly curious. Because if that's the concern, then it seems like no matter how many hoops you jump through... it's still obvious who's making the purchase, since every account is in your name. I can't speak to other wallets, accounts or exchanges, but Exodus asked for my SS, and Robinhood may have too — though I've had that account so long I don't even recall.
Being in Oregon, I already avoid sales tax lol. Nothing I order online gets taxed either, so I forget that (most of) the rest of the country deals with it. Still, thanks for the reminder — sincerely. I think that's partly why fees bother me. I'm used to paying just the listed price, unless it's something like a delivery app.
A self-custody wallet is what you ought to be using — not yet another KYC exchange.
That means the route looks like this: KYC exchange -> self-custody wallet (used once, or at minimum reserved for grey market activity) -> vendor.
Why bother? It hands your KYC exchange a legal fig leaf, and it makes it harder for the feds to build a credible accusation against you.
If you send payment to your vendor straight out of your KYC exchange account, that platform keeps a permanent, unalterable record of you engaging in something that isn't fully legal. Later on, once the political winds shift and the feds hand them a list of accounts that paid a pep vendor, you're finished. Keep in mind: the blockchain never forgets.
Route it through an intermediate self-custody account instead, and if anyone raises a question you simply say the crypto went to a friend and how that friend spent it isn't your problem. Now the feds have to establish that the self-custody account belongs to you — and as long as you keep quiet, they can't.
Beyond that, you can wipe out the connection between yourself and the peps without much effort. You buy KYC coins, convert them into Monero (also called XMR, a fully privacy-encrypted coin), and then convert that into whatever coin the vendor accepts.
To anyone inspecting later, your coins just disappear into the void that is XMR; on the vendor's side, anyone looking at their wallet sees coins arriving from that same void. That's my own method, and it's what everybody ought to be doing — but getting people to stop sending coins from KYC accounts to vendors is already an uphill fight, so one problem at a time.
Does that mean Exodus isn't a solid choice for sending payments to vendors? I picked up Exodus with grey in mind, and I don't intend to hold funds there or connect it to anything else. The sole reason I landed on Exodus was that it kept coming up as a recommendation around here, so I've got no particular loyalty to it. There isn't even anything in the wallet yet.
Monero has my attention — once I've handled the rest of this, I'll dig into it further, since either way it looks like I'll need to renew my ID first, because that's required to move crypto out of Robinhood to whichever option I settle on. That said, don't you still wind up paying through a wallet of your own in the end? Or do some wallets offer encryption/anonymity too, or is that only possible with P2P exchanges? Sorry if I'm asking dumb questions — my grasp of all this is
extremely rudimentary. And whenever I try to dig deeper, I only end up more lost.
For someone who obviously has no idea what they're doing, would the Monero GUI wallet be your pick, or would a non custodial option like Cake or Stack be simpler to navigate and work out? I'm trying to figure out whether I could move crypto from Robinhood into one of those accounts, swap it for XMR, then convert it into whatever a vendor accepts, and send it from there? Or does it always mean jumping between wallets with every exchange?
Honestly though, if the feds ever decided to come after me, no amount of crypto maneuvering would change anything. For the past three or four years I've been buying from American resellers with my regular debit card. Sure, I don't want to hand them an easy trail, but the real reason I'm bothering to learn crypto (and grey) is mainly to cut costs and get larger vials.
Sorry this is so scattered lol, I'm reading up on Monero while typing this, so I keep adding and editing as I go.
Paying straight out of your KYC exchange is the single worst option. Picture a Robinhood account with some stocks in it, connected to your bank. Buy a transparent coin there and send payment directly to a pep vendor, and you've created an enduring record of an illegal act, linked straight to your primary banking setup. Blockchains never forget, and sooner or later the government will crack down on peps; when that happens, the exchange will at minimum ban in bulk every account associated with pep vendors. You'd lose your main Robinhood account and your stocks, and Robinhood might even notify your bank, which could freeze your money. That's a nigtmare scenario. Avoid it, or you'll regret it.
A somewhat improved method: buy coins through a separate account with zero connection to your regular banking setup. That's the role Exodus plays here. It beats the previous option since the Exodus account can be treated as disposable — a ban on it is no big deal. However, purchasing coins on Exodus still requires verification (known as doing the KYC), and completing that KYC attaches your real identity to the illegal pep purchase. Perhaps the government will never bother, but perhaps another war on drugs arrives, and suddenly feds are at your door asking about illegal Chinese chemicals.
An even stronger method: purchase coins on a KYC platform like Exodus, then create a self-custody account unknown to anyone. Nothing on paper connects you to this self-custody address. Move the coins into it, then pay the vendor from there. Down the road, when the feds take interest, they'll see that this account paid the vendor, but no records show who owns it. Yes, they can follow the coins back to you, but if questioned you simply deny knowing anything about the self-custody account. Claim a friend who moved abroad bought the coins with cash. Now the feds must demonstrate the self-custody account belongs to you, and as long as you stay quiet, they can't.
And the finest method of all is to break the link using Monero, as described earlier — though even the third approach above (throwaway KYC account -> self-custody account you deny any knowledge of) is still a sizable step up.
J.Ayden said:
kugelblitz said:
J.Ayden said:
jsc1980 said:
If this reads as snarky, my apologies up front, but I'm not sure why folks get so worked up about crypto.
Step 1. Open an exchange account (plenty of options out there, so go with whichever you like). KYC hoops will likely be involved, though that's on the government, not crypto.
Step 2. Open a separate non-custodial wallet (Trust, Exodus, etc.).
Step 3. Make the purchase on the exchange
Step 4. Move it to that other wallet
Step 5. Forward it to the vendor
For my part, I tack on a few extra steps to make following the transactions/wallets a bit tougher, but that's just leftover habits from my younger years. Even with those added steps, none of it is all that difficult if you simply sit down and handle one step at a time (imo). And yes, fees pop up sometimes. Same as buying anything online comes with fees, taxes, etc. You're not paying sales tax, so just treat those fees as the crypto tax.
The main things to remember are (i) don't crap where you eat (aka don't send from the same wallet you used to purchase because that is tied to your funding source and could have repercussions) and... nope guess that's it.
No, you're not being snarky at all — I genuinely appreciate the help.
If I've already got Robinhood for crypto, is there any point in opening a second exchange account? If there is, I'll go ahead once my ID is updated. If there isn't, I'd prefer to keep using what I already have rather than adding yet more apps.
I believe I've worked out the remaining steps. What still trips me up is
why it actually matters whether you send from the same account you bought on, since every account remains linked and directly traceable to you anyway. I get why people advise against it, I just don't see what the real consequences would be beyond having the account closed — and that's exactly why I picked up Exodus, since I never intended to keep money sitting in it long term. Is the worry that bank accounts could get closed too? Or is it just that it would be obvious it's you doing the buying? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm honestly curious. Because if that's the concern, then it seems like no matter how many hoops you jump through... it's still obvious who's making the purchase, since every account is in your name. I can't speak to other wallets, accounts or exchanges, but Exodus asked for my SS, and Robinhood may have too — though I've had that account so long I don't even recall.
Being in Oregon, I already avoid sales tax lol. Nothing I order online gets taxed either, so I forget that (most of) the rest of the country deals with it. Still, thanks for the reminder — sincerely. I think that's partly why fees bother me. I'm used to paying just the listed price, unless it's something like a delivery app.
A self-custody wallet is what you ought to be using — not yet another KYC exchange.
That means the route looks like this: KYC exchange -> self-custody wallet (used once, or at minimum reserved for grey market activity) -> vendor.
Why bother? It hands your KYC exchange a legal fig leaf, and it makes it harder for the feds to build a credible accusation against you.
If you send payment to your vendor straight out of your KYC exchange account, that platform keeps a permanent, unalterable record of you engaging in something that isn't fully legal. Later on, once the political winds shift and the feds hand them a list of accounts that paid a pep vendor, you're finished. Keep in mind: the blockchain never forgets.
Route it through an intermediate self-custody account instead, and if anyone raises a question you simply say the crypto went to a friend and how that friend spent it isn't your problem. Now the feds have to establish that the self-custody account belongs to you — and as long as you keep quiet, they can't.
Beyond that, you can wipe out the connection between yourself and the peps without much effort. You buy KYC coins, convert them into Monero (also called XMR, a fully privacy-encrypted coin), and then convert that into whatever coin the vendor accepts.
To anyone inspecting later, your coins just disappear into the void that is XMR; on the vendor's side, anyone looking at their wallet sees coins arriving from that same void. That's my own method, and it's what everybody ought to be doing — but getting people to stop sending coins from KYC accounts to vendors is already an uphill fight, so one problem at a time.
Does that mean Exodus isn't a solid choice for sending payments to vendors? I picked up Exodus with grey in mind, and I don't intend to hold funds there or connect it to anything else. The sole reason I landed on Exodus was that it kept coming up as a recommendation around here, so I've got no particular loyalty to it. There isn't even anything in the wallet yet.
Monero has my attention — once I've handled the rest of this, I'll dig into it further, since either way it looks like I'll need to renew my ID first, because that's required to move crypto out of Robinhood to whichever option I settle on. That said, don't you still wind up paying through a wallet of your own in the end? Or do some wallets offer encryption/anonymity too, or is that only possible with P2P exchanges? Sorry if I'm asking dumb questions — my grasp of all this is
extremely rudimentary. And whenever I try to dig deeper, I only end up more lost.
For someone who obviously has no idea what they're doing, would the Monero GUI wallet be your pick, or would a non custodial option like Cake or Stack be simpler to navigate and work out? I'm trying to figure out whether I could move crypto from Robinhood into one of those accounts, swap it for XMR, then convert it into whatever a vendor accepts, and send it from there? Or does it always mean jumping between wallets with every exchange?
Honestly though, if the feds ever decided to come after me, no amount of crypto maneuvering would change anything. For the past three or four years I've been buying from American resellers with my regular debit card. Sure, I don't want to hand them an easy trail, but the real reason I'm bothering to learn crypto (and grey) is mainly to cut costs and get larger vials.
Sorry this is so scattered lol, I'm reading up on Monero while typing this, so I keep adding and editing as I go.
Once you swap into Monero, nobody can determine who controls those coins. The fact that you bought coins using your ID is irrelevant, since there's no way to see what you spent Monero on (or whether you spent it at all). Think of transparent coins as a gift card and Monero as cash. Obtaining a giftcard requires giving the store your details (imagine physical cards can't be bought in this world), but then you sell that giftcard to a friend for cash. That cash now has no connection to the original giftcard — except that with a giftcard/cash exchange your friend could snitch, whereas with Monero that's mathematically impossible.
J.Ayden said:
kugelblitz said:
J.Ayden said:
jsc1980 said:
If this reads as snarky, my apologies up front, but I'm not sure why folks get so worked up about crypto.
Step 1. Open an exchange account (plenty of options out there, so go with whichever you like). KYC hoops will likely be involved, though that's on the government, not crypto.
Step 2. Open a separate non-custodial wallet (Trust, Exodus, etc.).
Step 3. Make the purchase on the exchange
Step 4. Move it to that other wallet
Step 5. Forward it to the vendor
For my part, I tack on a few extra steps to make following the transactions/wallets a bit tougher, but that's just leftover habits from my younger years. Even with those added steps, none of it is all that difficult if you simply sit down and handle one step at a time (imo). And yes, fees pop up sometimes. Same as buying anything online comes with fees, taxes, etc. You're not paying sales tax, so just treat those fees as the crypto tax.
The main things to remember are (i) don't crap where you eat (aka don't send from the same wallet you used to purchase because that is tied to your funding source and could have repercussions) and... nope guess that's it.
No, you're not being snarky at all — I genuinely appreciate the help.
If I've already got Robinhood for crypto, is there any point in opening a second exchange account? If there is, I'll go ahead once my ID is updated. If there isn't, I'd prefer to keep using what I already have rather than adding yet more apps.
I believe I've worked out the remaining steps. What still trips me up is
why it actually matters whether you send from the same account you bought on, since every account remains linked and directly traceable to you anyway. I get why people advise against it, I just don't see what the real consequences would be beyond having the account closed — and that's exactly why I picked up Exodus, since I never intended to keep money sitting in it long term. Is the worry that bank accounts could get closed too? Or is it just that it would be obvious it's you doing the buying? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm honestly curious. Because if that's the concern, then it seems like no matter how many hoops you jump through... it's still obvious who's making the purchase, since every account is in your name. I can't speak to other wallets, accounts or exchanges, but Exodus asked for my SS, and Robinhood may have too — though I've had that account so long I don't even recall.
Being in Oregon, I already avoid sales tax lol. Nothing I order online gets taxed either, so I forget that (most of) the rest of the country deals with it. Still, thanks for the reminder — sincerely. I think that's partly why fees bother me. I'm used to paying just the listed price, unless it's something like a delivery app.
A self-custody wallet is what you ought to be using — not yet another KYC exchange.
That means the route looks like this: KYC exchange -> self-custody wallet (used once, or at minimum reserved for grey market activity) -> vendor.
Why bother? It hands your KYC exchange a legal fig leaf, and it makes it harder for the feds to build a credible accusation against you.
If you send payment to your vendor straight out of your KYC exchange account, that platform keeps a permanent, unalterable record of you engaging in something that isn't fully legal. Later on, once the political winds shift and the feds hand them a list of accounts that paid a pep vendor, you're finished. Keep in mind: the blockchain never forgets.
Route it through an intermediate self-custody account instead, and if anyone raises a question you simply say the crypto went to a friend and how that friend spent it isn't your problem. Now the feds have to establish that the self-custody account belongs to you — and as long as you keep quiet, they can't.
Beyond that, you can wipe out the connection between yourself and the peps without much effort. You buy KYC coins, convert them into Monero (also called XMR, a fully privacy-encrypted coin), and then convert that into whatever coin the vendor accepts.
To anyone inspecting later, your coins just disappear into the void that is XMR; on the vendor's side, anyone looking at their wallet sees coins arriving from that same void. That's my own method, and it's what everybody ought to be doing — but getting people to stop sending coins from KYC accounts to vendors is already an uphill fight, so one problem at a time.
Does that mean Exodus isn't a solid choice for sending payments to vendors? I picked up Exodus with grey in mind, and I don't intend to hold funds there or connect it to anything else. The sole reason I landed on Exodus was that it kept coming up as a recommendation around here, so I've got no particular loyalty to it. There isn't even anything in the wallet yet.
Monero has my attention — once I've handled the rest of this, I'll dig into it further, since either way it looks like I'll need to renew my ID first, because that's required to move crypto out of Robinhood to whichever option I settle on. That said, don't you still wind up paying through a wallet of your own in the end? Or do some wallets offer encryption/anonymity too, or is that only possible with P2P exchanges? Sorry if I'm asking dumb questions — my grasp of all this is
extremely rudimentary. And whenever I try to dig deeper, I only end up more lost.
For someone who obviously has no idea what they're doing, would the Monero GUI wallet be your pick, or would a non custodial option like Cake or Stack be simpler to navigate and work out? I'm trying to figure out whether I could move crypto from Robinhood into one of those accounts, swap it for XMR, then convert it into whatever a vendor accepts, and send it from there? Or does it always mean jumping between wallets with every exchange?
Honestly though, if the feds ever decided to come after me, no amount of crypto maneuvering would change anything. For the past three or four years I've been buying from American resellers with my regular debit card. Sure, I don't want to hand them an easy trail, but the real reason I'm bothering to learn crypto (and grey) is mainly to cut costs and get larger vials.
Sorry this is so scattered lol, I'm reading up on Monero while typing this, so I keep adding and editing as I go.
Cake and Stack wallet are both fine. I personally use Feather wallet, but that's because I started using Monero before either Stack or Cake existed, and I don't want to change.
Buying KYC coin on any exchange, sending it to Cake/Stack, swapping to Monero, then swapping to whatever vendor wants should be fine. Just make sure that you don't use the same wallet after you swap from Monero. If you for example buy USDT/SOL on KYC exchange, then send it to self-custody Solana wallet, then swap to Monero and from it, if you send the swapped coins to the same USDT/SOL wallet as the wallet where KYC wallet landed you've made the whole exercise pointless. It needs to be a fresh wallet.
This is why I personally buy a different coin on the KYC exchange. Let's say the vendor wants USDT/SOL. I will buy Litecoin (LTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH), swap that to Monero, and then swap Monero to USDT/SOL. That way I can't accidentally lose track of things and send the USDT/SOL to the same wallet that USDT/SOL came from.
