Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Is this a good way to make coins anonymous, or perhaps overkill?
by
acoindr
on 17/09/2014, 22:54:19 UTC
Am I able to use multiple mixer services to make my bitcoins anonymous?

That doesn't make them anonymous, but linking multiple mixing steps together definitely provides better obfuscation.

So for example, can I:
Buy legitimate coins from something like Coinbase.
Send them from Coinbase into bitcoinfog.
Send them from bitcoinfog to a wallet on blockchains.info
Send them from blockchains.info to another mixing service (Grams Helix perhaps)
Then purchase whatever from Helix

To much or a good process?

There is no such thing as too much, except in the case of becoming so burdensome and inconvenient it's not done.

Mixing services don't necessarily unlink you from any coin trail. If, for example, you send properly mixed coins back to a wallet you control, which are mixed with other coins that might be linked back to you the mixing in the earlier step may be irrelevant.

The degree to which you need worry about anonymity depends on the level of scrutiny the activity with the coins is likely to draw. If you're purchasing some legal, but potentially embarrassing product somewhere then you're fine using maybe one obfuscation technique or none at all since by default coins are not explicitly linked to identities the way personal checks or credit cards are.

OTOH if you're looking to sell goods deemed illegal by big powerful governments you should be very aware of ways coins might be linked to you, of which there are many. In such cases, at a minimum, I'd recommend using two completely separate devices (say laptops) to keep anonymous and real life profiles separate. This makes it's easier to keep track of when to use network connections, such as Tor or various websites, in ways which might unlink a real world identity. That's obviously a more advanced way to use bitcoin for high anonymity, which definitely isn't there automatically.