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121 sats \ 12 replies \ @optimism 24 Jun \ on: What do you consider a fair premium to pay for no-kyc bitcoin? AskSN
Zero. You can teach yourself how to route through LN, configure wasabi, route through LN again, for free. Unless you're a shitcoiner that needs to get fiat gainz all the time, it ought to be OK for this process to take a while at 1sat/vb opportunity times. Otherwise you can just use LN and be done with it. Sender privacy is good.
Doesn't it come down to your threat model? Buying kyc creates a record that your legal identity owns that amount of bitcoin.
If the state does a 6102 type event, they start with the record and knock on your door. The coinjoins and lightning txs that happen after you pulled it off the exchange are of no concern to them.
If you are worried about wrench attacks, same thing is true. If an exchange you use leaks their records, now you are a target. No matter how well you obfuscate the onchain footprint.
Coinjoins are more useful if you'd like the people you spend with to not know about your stack. But maybe good coin control can achieve quite a lot here.
What is the threat model where you buy kyc-free and mix/coinjoin/swap chains?
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Doesn't it come down to your threat model?
Of course, and it's always better to avoid any KYC.
But be wary about the counterparty and the exchanged good. Bank transfers are fully traceable and you don't have sender or receiver obfuscation so your counterparty knows who you are. For example, it's trivial to infiltrate robosats with high penetration rate at current volumes and you're often exposing KYC-linked accounts. In-person cash exchange make you traceable. Your friends can be rubber hosed... the possibilities are endless and I don't think there's a catch-all protection.
Also, if your coin comes up in an investigation 1 then, for sufficient amounts, you're still tagged and could be worth exploring, doesn't matter if this is LE or (another form of) organized crime.
the state
The protection Bitcoin offers against the state is
hardening against confiscation 2, not avoidance of accountability. On the contrary; the open ledger design ensures accountability and obfuscation only helps against unsophisticated attackers. If you're a big fish, I don't think you can avoid it at all. The only way you could get away with laundring is because you're too small a fish for anyone to care about.So what you can (and imho should) do is spread risk. You don't want all your coin to be flowing through the same channels.
Coinjoins are more useful if you'd like the people you spend with to not know about your stack.
Similarly for the people that you traded with, as long as you're consistent and do the coin control post-mix too. Coinjoin without post-mix coin control is pointless.
What is the threat model where you buy kyc-free and mix/coinjoin/swap chains?
The counterparty and the traceability of whatever you're trading for.
Footnotes
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note that it can simply be that your coin's "history" causes this - thanks to the utxo tainting theories that law enforcement uses. ↩
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If a state, with their monopoly on violence, truly is committed to getting your coin then they have means to compel you. But they can't do it Justin Trudeau style by ordering a third party to execute a freeze or seizure. ↩
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
So what you can (and imho should) do is spread risk. You don't want all your coin to be flowing through the same channels.
This is very good advice.
And it seems to me that, as you say, the fair premium for non-kyc is probably zero, or close to it. Kyc-free reduces your attack surface, but I'm unsure by how much.
Imagine what you could do if you dedicated 8% of your stack on personal security. It is, at least, a trade off worth considering.
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the fair premium for non-kyc is probably zero
Yes, or close to it. Also because that's what it should be - privacy is the greatest good we don't have.
Kyc-free reduces your attack surface, but I'm unsure by how much.
The only reason why I don't want to argue against tether-on-taro much is because long-term it could enable a proper chain into tether-as-ecash, which is useful for the majority of unfree people that need to DCA:
- "buy" USDT for cheap on an exchange for USD
- withdraw to taro
- LN bridge taro-USDT into an ecash USDT mint of choice
- nutswap for sats on robosats
Theoretically we could do this today by backing the dollar ecash with sats, but it would be risky to guarantee that peg and hard to get the rails in place to an ecash mint from a CEX. The mint would need a lot of liquidity for that.
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So would you be ok with kycing to buy on a central exchange to do this?
Just asking because my concern is the threat of my data leaking and then getting wrenched, not so much whether a particular utxo can be traced to me, but that my id be connected to a data honeypot.
just use LN and be done with it. Sender privacy is good.
Boltz charge around 4-5% to get it back on chain, no?
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So would you be ok with kycing to buy on a central exchange to do this?
Yes, because it doesn't really matter: anyone you trade with can wrench you. Your robosats peer can ID you through your bank account. Your f2f cash trade can ID you cuz you met. Do you think they won't sell you out if they get in trouble with organized crime? They'll do so in an instant if it will save their lives.
The only way is to earn sats anon and be really good about opsec. But that's very hard to execute at scale. Instead, just don't be a big fish in a central place. Spread risk. Don't use the same methods all the time.
Boltz charge around 4-5% to get it back on chain, no?
.5% is what they charge + tx fees. Don't push small amounts.
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Hm. Food for thought. Chances of these scenarios seems less likely than an central exchange getting hacked, but definitelt not negligible.
configure wasabi,
Last I checked coinjoins had fees too.
So effectively,
Buy on exchange (0%) -> swap (0.5%) -> coinjoin (fee depends on coordinator?) -> reverse swap (0.5%) /open channel (miner fee) -> swap into cold storage (0.5)
Looks like it could be close to 4% or 5% with more leg work when its all said and done.
I guess with some inbound liquidity you can send directly from the exchange to your node and swap to cold storage with reasonable privacy. That's probably ideal, again, only if you're okay with exchanges having your coordinates
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No you just on-chain transfer into cold storage. LN is what you use on the way out of cold storage, but not through swap but you simply fund a channel. Boltz does mixing checks so you only want to use them to offramp from LN. For onramp, just find a cheap counterparty on Amboss.
Edit: My last round of mixing (at 2-5 sat/vb) cost me ~0.3% in fees in total. So 0.5% for boltz + 0.3% for mixing = 0.8%... LN fees plus - unless you're unlucky - tx fees out, won't add .2% there if you're using Msat denominations... so under 1%.
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This makes sense. 8% seems like a lot in comparison when you put it that way.
Then you're just spending sats or p2p trading for fiat if needed.
Still I don't like the coerced identification that central exchange require.
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