All the posts lately just trashing CoinBase.... shits ridiculous. You guys are surprised that a corporation is tracking your every action? You really thought it was OK to copy&paste a DNM address into your CoinBase account, enter ''any'' number and hit send without attracting some type of attention to yourself?
The whole reason basic OpSec is brought up again and again and again; your freedom, job, income, right to vote, your whole life (and maybe someone else's) depends on it! I'm not here to lecture (that's what the noob section is for) so if you don't know what your doing do us all a favor and go back to Noob-School. OK, now back to CoinBase.
Just because they track coins, for all we know all we know to their 'final destination', doesn't mean it cannot be used safely. This is true for pretty much any U.S. market where you can buy BTC as well, since they are all likely to have similar compliance programs in place (albeit with varrying levels of capability and/or staffing). It's already been posted on here but to help out those of you who seem to be having trouble with this (and there seems to be a lot of you), here's the basics.
TL/DR If you know what your doing and already know how to use CoinBase safely nothing below this line should be news to you.
To stay anonymous you need to separate the coins from yourself. Think of every tranaction out of market (in this case CoinBase) as an extension of your license # - even better than a government-issued I.D. since you probably had to submit not just that but also your SSN, address, and bank accounts w/ proof of ownership but maybe a credit card or two and a picture of yourself in order to buy it in the first place.
Before going over the basics lets clear up some terminology first. * Hot Wallet: The first wallet to receive coins from CoinBase (or other market) * Decoy Wallet: A temproary wallet created to handle only a select few transactions between different addresses. * Storage Wallet: The wallet you use to store your coins in before normal use (you should have at least two, one for DNM stuff and the other for everything else) * Tumbler: An online service that accepts a BTC deposit and ''mixes'' or ''tumbles'' the coins around, in the end sending you back completley different coins * Market: Either a DNM or legal market, wherever your spending your coins
** How to separate you from your coins ** The key here is to have as many transactions as possible from seemingly different locations and owned by apparently different people injected between your hot wallet and your storage wallet. This is harder than it sounds: you can't just create a bunch of wallets in Electrum (even using Tor), send a bunch of transactions to yourself and be done. Why? Because it would likely all end up on the same connection which could be linked back to your IP, not to mention the coins would still be traceable directly back to your hot wallet. The easiest way to demontrate the process is visually:
Case 1 - Direct-to-market
CoinBase -> DNM
Pros: None.
Cons: You might be getting a letter or a knock soon.
Case 2 - The Lazy Deposit
CoinBase -> Hot Wallet -> Decoy?(...)/Storage Wallet? -> Market
Pros: Very easy for any noob to accomplish without trying too hard
Cons: Coins trace directly back to you, can be traced by CoinBase
Case 3: Basic Tumbling
CoinBase -> Hot Wallet -> Decoy?(...) -> Tumbler -> Storage Wallet? -> Market
Pros: Not very difficult, coins difficult to trace
Cons: Tumbling fee (2.5%-5%), more involved than lazy deposit, CoinBase can track your coins to the tumbling service depending on your use (of lack of use) of decoy wallets.
The last example is really the only way you should be handling your coins if you plan on doing something even remotely illegal with them!
** Problem with just using Electrum ** Electrum doesn't give you any control over change addresses (if you don't know what this means you need to go back to Noob-School). That means no matter how many new decoy addresses you create there is a very good chance that you might end up mixing clean and dirty coins. Once that happens all your coins are dirty (tied to your ID).
If you are only using Electrum you need to (at a minimum) use multiple wallets. To improve your odds follow the tips below and/or use a full client like Armory that gives you more control over the movement of your coins.
** Tips for the paranoid ** * Use as many decoy addresses as possible (in different wallets), and use different Tor identities for multiple wallets. Be careful not to get them mixed up! You want each wallet to look like it is created/used/owned somewhere far far away from you. * When transacting between decoy wallets try NOT to use nice whole numbers for the value (in USD or BTC) and send the change to a different hot wallet. For the super-paranoid you should probably burn that change wallet (eg. detroy the private key and never ever use it). * Tumble between wallets (created using different Tor identities) at least twice
The point is you can use any exchange anonymously no matter how Hitler their TOS may be. Just be careful and follow basic OpSec and you should be fine.
Who do you get your meth from?