If you want to mask your identity wouldn't you be better off buying Visa gift cards with cash at a major store and then using them to purchase services online?

Even better to have someone else buy the gift cards and then hand them off to you in a dark alley. Bonus points if you're both wearing trench coats and fedoras.

"We'll give you 20 bucks if you tell us who you bought these for"

I wonder how many people get busted through localbitcoin.com like this.

Double bonus points if your coat-clad fedora-wearers aren't in the alley at the same time and use a dead-drop.

Not really. You can unlink all of your cryptocurrency transactions with Monero. This is sufficient for fiat too.

It is harder than that though. Monero has an issue in that everyone is only doing ringsize=3 transactions, providing little anonymity. If you buy from an exchange then turn around and sell it back, even with different amounts, you will be on a shortlist of suspects.

To do Monero properly you need to wait a while (at least hours, better days) while churning to other addresses, being sure to keep your ringsize and fees looking like everyone else's. Hopefully they will raise the ringsize minimum to 10 in the upcoming hardfork - that will go some way towards fixing the problem.

For now, I bet there will be cases of people happily bouncing to Monero via Shapeshift and getting busted.

I could argue the merits of the ringsize but it would be moot because it's being bumped to 10 in September. So I will just leave this here as a note that the argument that a ringsize of 3 is not very anonymous will be moot in September for future readers.

Even with ringsize 10, it does not help if someone does BTC->XMR->BTC with the same exchange (or an exchange that shares records) without adding some XMR->XMR churn steps inbetween.

My future freedom depends on me getting this right, so I am a bit sensitive on this topic. It took me a while to cut through the fluff and figure out how to churn enough to make it safe. Fortunately I also used multiple Bitcoin mixers on both sides and didn't originally get our Bitcoin investment in a way that's directly linked to any of our identities.

It is somewhat irresponsible of Monero's marketing to make such grandiose privacy claims at the moment. I say this as someone that loves Monero and thinks their team is fantastic, and I'd bet Monero will be the privacy currency winner if it isn't already.

I'm with you on the "my future freedom depends on getting this right". Im in that same boat.

Personally I can see someone obviously paying me in BTC. But I will only send out XMR. It's a one way street with me regarding BTC.

Time is going to tell wether we retain our freedom or not by betting on XMR.

I agree, by the time Monero becomes the default part of these discussions it will be a much more hardened network

Or using a coin designed to be anonymous and private, like.. Monero. You would still probably be on camera buying a Visa gift card in a retail store. With timestamp.

This is the correct answer.

Stores have cameras and Visa cards have unique numbers. Not too hard to put the two together.

Bitcoin let's you transact without having to interact in physical space to acquire or spend them.

And just how are you going to do a dollar <-> bitcoin exchange without revealing any information about your identity?

You don't have to trade for dollars. You can use one or more intermediaries such as gift cards and high resale value goods, just like using proxies to distance yourself. The more hops, the harder it is to connect.

Bitcoin mixers would serve you well in this instance. Just buy BTC normally and clean via a mixer.

And how do you know that that the Bitcoin mixer you decided to use is not actually operated by the FBI and that they are actually keeping a private log tying bitcoins in with bitcoins out?

Monero.

This whole argument is stuck in 2012. Lean not on your own understanding and look at the technology thats out there.

Had similar questions yesterday and some hackers responded here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15016338

That doesn't seem to address hostile mixers? Running dark-net bazaars, bitcoin mixers and "hacker"(cracker) forums seems like trivial intel basics. Just like running "anonymous" [ed:remailers,[1]] and tor nodes.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixmaster_anonymous_remailer

I actually think it would suffice to payout at random times with an insanely high number of bitcoin addresses (all autogenerated via a script) for high number of users (the more the better). It would be virtually impossible to know who got how much BTC out (may be in, but not out).

As for the hostile mixers, I'm afraid I can't offer any solution other than to rely on reputation. That said, it is rather telling that bitmixer.io is closing [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843373]. It may not be safe to run a mixer; the feds may come after you.

surveillance cameras at the checkout, not to mention the ridiculously high reload fee.

No, you would not.

Pretty sure, it leaves a trail.

It does if you've connected it to a bank account, but if you didn't do that, or you used funds that originated from a bank account to get access to a wallet which wasn't connected to you directly, you could make it a rather difficult trail to follow with certainty