I have been DCAing for quite a while with a KYC exchanges and I'm thinking to use CoinJoin given that I live in a jurisdiction where Bitcoin isnt legal so perhaps i should consider this option ....
Did anyone mixed their coins? What are the risks?
Depends what you will be doing with your bitcoin.if ur just gonna sell it at a higher price back to an exchange then dont bother. If u want to use your bitcoin for pirchasing goods and eliminate the papertrail of your ownership of that spent bitcoin, then yes id mix some of those sats.
Building up a separate stash of non kyc coin , mixing it, and keeping it in cold storage is what i recommend.
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This
Or you might want to dig into lightning unannounced channels to funnel it through. Has a similar effect of making it difficult to trace your coin.
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Speaking of mixing, does anyone run their sats thru monero network? That is kinda like loosing trail, no?
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This is my thought process as well. Curious what others think of this strategy.
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It's only worth it if you understand that coinjoins do not provide everlasting privacy. They provide temporary obfuscation.
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Not much risk really, if you are happy paying the fees and you are not to bothered with ever going back to a KYC exchange then you should be fine because these CEXs might not want to coins with a mixing history but you can always sell P2P
Also CJs don't always guarantee forward privacy once you mix coins, if you dox a public key in the future, you back to square one and would have to go about mixing again
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What do people mean in the comments saying you might not be able to use them after CoinJoin ?
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it is perceived that people who coinjoin have a motive behind doing so (often understood as a criminal motive) that is why a coinjoined coin can be deemed "tainted"
Most big exchanges are regulated and they want to avoid headache from regulators so they may not accept a coin without history (coinjoined)
I cant confirm the above 100% as I have not seen any exchange banning it publicly
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Thanks for the reply, I didnt know this and is a good consideration before doing it.
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If you are not using big KYC exchanges, which I assume you don't, as Bitcoin is illegal where you live, you should not have problems with coinjoins.
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I do coinjoin almost all bitcoins I buy in a way different from non-KYC p2p (never used a real KYC exchange, but some local exchange services that technically can track my identity easily if they want).
One important reason to do that is not just hide the history of your coins, but make your future counterpart be totally uncertain on how big your stack is. That's why I think it is important to use as small denomination as possible, e.g. 100k sats in Whirlpool. It is slow but worth that.
Withdrawal your money from an exchange using LN (and then swapping to onchain in small portions if you like) seems a bit worse but still acceptable option to me.
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Thanks for the comprehensive view @Tulun 100k sats each time ... with such pace it will easily become a full time job :)
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No, with Whirlpool using Samourai or Sparrow wallet you don't need to manage every coinjoin manually - you can start with whatever amount, then it is split into 100k (or larger if you prefer) chunks and they are mixed automatically then. You only have to keep the machine running the wallet turned on all the time. First mix happens very quickly, but if you want better anonymity for your UTXOs it's typical to wait for at least 3 mixes for each, and that can take quite a while (usually I had no more than 10 remixes per week, running 24/7).
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Risks is not being able to sell them.. But you shouldn't sell your bitcoin anyway. At least to a kyc exchange.
If you want to get rid of it, find some service or local merchant that takes it, or sell it peer to peer. There's many people who want it.
Also another way of mixing is to transfer to a non kyc exchange. Some exchanges don't ask for kyc unless its over a certain amount and not dealing with fiat currency
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Or you could run it through LN or Liquid.
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LN yes liquid no
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LN is great for payments yes but I wouldn't use it as a store of value unless you're running a full node.
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yup via LN ... no one would know if they are coinjoined or not (doesnt matt
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From my experience, I have heard there are privacy issues with coinjoin. Is robosats available in your jurisdiction?
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I think Robosats is available! its just that there isnt enough market on it locally so I prefer a face-to-face P2P (all underground but there is a big market mainly buying/selling USDT by Merchants
Merchants is a new profession emerged to fill a gap (banking on/offramps), they buy USDT from people at 1$ and sell it to people for a small premium (anything from 0.5-2% premium depending on demand)
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I'd be interested to know as I live in a country where it's been labelled a commodity, but we've seen the gov go after mixer protocols.
I also imagine a future where they contact you asking "Hey Mr X, I see that you sent your BTC to a mixer, why? and where is it now?"
I know I can say I lost it or was hacked, and they wouldn't know, but I assume I'll be flagged.
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