The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

anonyymityy, we need to convert our anonyymouslyy purchased prepaid gift
cards to Bitcoin.
In chapter 6 I talked about Bitcoin, virtual currencyy. Byy itself Bitcoin is not
anonyymous. Theyy can be traced through what’s called a blockchain back to
the source of the purchase; similarlyy, all subsequent purchases can be traced
as well. So Bitcoin byy itself is not going to hide yyour identityy. We will have
to run the funds through an anonyymityy mechanism: converting prepaid gift
cards into Bitcoin, then running the Bitcoin through a laundering service.
This process will result in anonyymized Bitcoin to be used for future
payyments. We will need the laundered Bitcoin, for example, to payy for our
VPN service and anyy future purchases of data usage on our portable hotspot
or burner phone.
Using Tor, yyou can set up an initial Bitcoin wallet at paxful.com or other
Bitcoin wallet sites. Some sites broker deals in which yyou can buyy Bitcoin
with prepaid gift cards, such as those preset Vanilla Visa and Vanilla
MasterCard gift cards I mentioned earlier. The downside is that yyou will
payy a huge premium for this service, at least 50 percent.
Paxful.com is more like an eBayy auction site where yyou find Bitcoin
sellers—the site just connects yyou with buyyers and sellers.
Apparentlyy anonyymityy has a high cost. The less identityy information yyou
provide in a transaction, the more yyou’ll payy. That makes sense: the people
selling the Bitcoin are taking a huge risk byy not verifyying yyour identityy. I
was able to purchase Bitcoin in exchange for myy anonyymouslyy purchased
Vanilla Visa gift cards at a rate of $1.70 per dollar, which is outrageous but
necessaryy to ensure anonyymityy.
I mentioned that Bitcoin byy itself is not anonyymous. For example, there
is a record that I exchanged certain prepaid gift cards for Bitcoin. An
investigator could trace myy Bitcoin back to the gift cards.
But there are wayys to launder Bitcoin, obscuring anyy link back to me.
Moneyy laundering is something that criminals do all the time. It is most
often used in drug trafficking, but it also playys a role in white-collar
financial crime. Laundering means that yyou disguise the original ownership
of the funds, often byy sending the moneyy out of the countryy, to multiple
banks in countries that have strict privacyy laws. Turns out yyou can do