I'm wondering more for the sake of people who buy only for personal use than I am for vendors, etc. (although, I guess in the grand scheme of things it is all technically the same). I doubt most vendors would even use an ATM themselves. I'd assume most are probably buying/laundering btc in person, from other people, or have perhaps facilitated some complicated chai through which they acquire/launder btc.
Obviously, the major disadvantage that comes with a service such as coinbase is the direct tie to your identity via bank account or credit card and the purchase of btc. But that just doesn't seem much worse for OPSEC as any of the ATMs these days. Even if you can find an ATM that doesn't make you verify via a code sent to your fucking cellphone before letting you stick some cash in the damn thing, every ATM is still taking your photograph when you use it.
A few of the ATMs around me even require address verification before you can purchase BTC from them. So what's the big fucking advantage to OPSEC in using an ATM if my cellphone and/or residence have to be tied to the damn thing anyway?
And besides, doesn't the meat of the anonymisation process really lie in the >Darknet electrum>Helix light process anyway? If that process somehow proves insufficient and the coinse become traceable, aren't you fucked no matter what? How does it matter through what means you originally acquire the coins? If they can be traced back to the source, that source is always going to be you no matter what, right? Even if you bought the coins from some rando on the street corner, if rando gets shaken down by Uncle Sam, he's going to give them what they need, assuming they couldn't already get it themselves no shakedown required.
Or say you pay cash for a $100 Itunes gift card. Hop on Tor, and find a way to trade that for coin, then go back through the process >electrum>helix>etc. If the coins somehow become traceable, guess where they get traced to? That Itunes gift card. So what if you bought it with cash? Apple knows the exact time and location of the place that card was purchased, and that place has cameras. So have a friend buy the Itunes gift card for you, then what? The feds are just going to shake him down instead and he will rightully tell them who he bought the card for.
Is this Coinbase stigma just facilitating some false sense of security here, or am I missing a piece of the puzzle?
Maybe someone smarter can put things into perspective, but from where I'm sitting the clearnet preamble seems almost irrelevant.
If the usual process fails, the long dick of the law prevails. One way or another, you're getting fucked.
Edit: aaww man. Noob flair... :(. Hit me right in the fee fees mod mods.
idk about bitcoins and all that but i do agree with ur last sentence