yes, the only way to be truly anonymous is pay and be paid with cash in exchange for BTC personally by hands.
Is it though? In order to make such a meeting you need to use a phone, text messages, a public place. Basically with every step of finding and successfully meeting with a person face to face you lose at least some part of the "anonymity" if not all.
Yes obviously coins are anonymous because whenever we buy and sell in terms of this digital currency any type of personal information regarding the holder is not required at all. However perfection in terms of anonymity cannot be achieved via bitcoins.
So no one can completely declare it as anonymous because it is somewhat pseudonymous. We all know that any type of exchange is not traceable and hence it provides a greater level of security to the consumers.