The case for keeping your Bitcoin private becomes more compelling

The case for keeping your Bitcoin private becomes more compelling

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The global economy is crashing hard and those wishing to protect their wealth are taking it out of stocks and other traditional financial instruments and they are transferring into perceived asymmetric and therefore ‘safer’ assets such as precious metals and Cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency and namely Bitcoin would appear to have huge upside potential in the coming downturn and protecting what you have by not broadcasting that you are the owner is becoming more and more critical in this current dangerous climate of phishing, hacking and other security issues.

People who want to protect their bitcoin privacy must have something to hide!

Isn’t this true? Isn’t it only bad actors that want to move their money through bitcoin?

This couldn’t be further from the truth and there are many reasons why a law-abiding citizen could and should protect their bitcoin privacy. There are many reasons why you wouldn’t want certain business transactions to be made public and let’s face it — who wants any of their private financial dealings to be publicly viewable? No matter how innocent they are.

When somebody makes a normal bank transaction it doesn’t go onto a public ledger where anyone with the know-how can view what was spent and possibly who made that transaction.

Many people think that the bitcoin network gives anonymity, and to some extent it does — it certainly gives you more privacy than using a credit card and it does make things harder for a potential snooper given that the transactions are not linked to any particular identity.

However, your public address info together with your IP can be used to trace you through your private wifi connection which does have your actual identity tied to it. So how can the average person get around this?

Bitcoin Laundry cleans your Bitcoin, making it untraceable

Given the lack of anonymity when making bitcoin purchases it’s incumbent upon all right-minded citizens to do their utmost to protect their assets. If you were keeping a large amount of cash and/or other precious assets at home you really wouldn’t want other people knowing about this.

This is where Bitcoin Laundry comes in. ‘Mixing’ your Bitcoin is simply the best way to guard your privacy and it could be argued that this will become the norm for all privacy-focused individuals and organisations into the future as Bitcoin becomes more main-stream.

So how does this ‘mixing’ process work?

As you can see above, the interface for Bitcoin Laundry is very simple and clean. No login is required and consequently no KYC either. For extra privacy, you can visit the site at the .onion address: http://btcdryi67te57itq.onion/.

You have the opportunity to input up to 5 addresses where you would like your Bitcoin to be sent to. There is also a ‘delay’ indicator where you can set a time delay as to how long you wish to wait before receiving your Bitcoin — the longer the delay means there is less likelihood the transaction will be able to be tracked back to you.

When you hit the ‘Clean Bitcoins now’ button a QR Code, an address and a session ID number are generated. Making a copy of the session ID number is a very good idea just in case anything should go wrong and you can then use this number to query the transaction with Bitcoin Laundry.

You can now send your Bitcoin to be cleaned to the address that has been output. Your newly cleaned Bitcoin will then end up in the wallet you originally wanted it sent to.

This is only a quick description of the process and you will want to read the Bitcoin Laundry blog before starting.

For such a service you would expect to pay a small percentage of the bitcoin that had been mixed. It is a small percentage and an extremely small percentage at that — it actually only costs 0.0002 BTC per address the mixed bitcoin is sent to. That’s only $1.33 at today’s exchange rate!

Bitcoin Laundry does keep a log of the session and will keep this for up to 7 days. However, the customer does have the option to delete all logs themselves as soon as the transaction is complete — in the process deleting the last traces of that particular transaction.

Conclusion

Those who are hedging into Bitcoin during the present tumultuous financial times are holding this asset perhaps as a speculative bet on future price rises and perhaps as a hedge against the fairly dramatic plunges seen on global stock indexes.

Whatever the reason, people need to think long and hard about how best to protect their Bitcoin. This is such a new financial asset that the full security infrastructure has not yet been built around it. A lot of new entrants into this market just aren’t aware of the pitfalls and dangers and don’t realise that they need to take many precautions on their own initiative.

As such, it could be said that you are your own bank. The hand-holding that is so commonplace and which we take for granted in traditional finance either doesn’t exist or is not robust enough in the world of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Laundry is a critical service that can help you to protect your privacy and is simple and cheap enough to become a popular ‘go-to’ in this exciting yet challenging new sector.

Disclaimer: All the above views are my own and should in no way be taken as financial advice. All those wishing to invest in Bitcoin should do their own research or use the services of a fully certified financial advisor.

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