By: Kurt Wuckert Jr.
First, a disclaimer. I am writing the guide for informational purposes only. What you choose to do with it is your responsibility alone. I do not condone using this procedure for hiding illegal activity. As always, it is up to you to know and follow the laws of your country. Also, a lot of the language contained herein comes from a similar piece written by Chris Webb of Anarcrypt on facebook who wrote a guide utilizing a different privacy coin. I have re-written large portions, but others are his work, and he deserves credit as the inspiration for the below.
Absolutely any cryptocurrency can be anonymized using this method: BCH, LTC, ETH or any other major currency! If you’re comfortable with the basics, the SUMMARY is probably plenty of information. If you’re looking for hand-holding, that option is here too.
If you intend to use cryptocurrency as a means of exchange, it is important to anonymize its use, because privacy is a basic human right. Use wallets that allow you to generate a new address for every single transaction, or you can be tracked! If you fear you are being tracked or that your wallet address has been compromised in some way, here’s how you can clean up the mess!
HERE’S THE LONG VERSION:
For this process, we will use the privacy of the Monero blockchain. I’m not going to go into the technical aspects on how Monero’s mixing works, but just so you have an idea, imagine taking a rock and grinding it down into sand, throwing that sand onto a beach, and then grabbing a new handful of sand. Even though the sand is out in the open, it’s impossible to determine which grains of sand belong to who. Other than the technical aspects, the key to successful mixing is dependent upon how large the beach is. Fortunately Monero’s beach is already plenty large and is getting larger by the day. For more info on Monero, CLICK HERE
Before you move forward, please make sure you’re working in a secure environment. Use a good and up to date antivirus, run a scan with Malwarebytes, password protect your profile, use full disk encryption, connect to your vpn, etc. If you’re not using a VPN, you really should – and ONLY use OpenVPN standards because others have been compromised by the NSA. I recommend AirVPN.
Let’s get started. For this guide I’m going to be cleaning some Bitcoin Cash, and I’m going to be using Shapeshift as my exchange. Other exchanges you may want to look at are Flypme, XMR.to and Changelly. Regarding Chagelly, I don’t like how the require an email, but you can use a fake one so it’s not a big deal. I suggest that you look at the exchange rates of all the exchanges as they can be quite different. The exchange rate is where most of the cost of this anonymizing procedure comes from. Be prepared to take a hit during this process. You may want to do a test run with small amount to get an idea of what this is going to cost you.
The first step is to install and configure TWO wallets from https://getmonero.org GUI wallet, or from at mymonero.com. Go into the options and set up the highest level of mixing for your transactions, or if you’re using https://getmonero.org, it will be an option available right before you send.Once you’ve got your Monero wallets up and running, you need to set up the wallet you’re going to use to store your cleaned coins. There are many ways to do this, such as using a hardware wallet or a paper wallet, but with my setup, I’ll create an entirely new profile in my Linux virtual machine that resides in an encrypted volume that I dismount when not in use. After I’ve created my new profile, I’ll log into it and install the wallet from https://electroncash.org Obviously, since this is the final destination of your currency, taking proper steps to keep it secure, private, and backed up are imperative. Every wallet and environment is different so it’s up to you to figure this out.
Now that you’ve got your Monero wallets installed and have set up your ‘clean’ destination wallet, you are ready to start the cleaning process. Go to shapeshift.io or whichever exchange you want to use, and for the Deposit option, choose the coin you want to clean. In my example I’ll choose Bitcoin Cash. Then you need to select Monero as your Receiving coin. Proceed to the next screen and input your Monero receiving address, which you’ll get from your Monero wallet. For the refund address, get the address from your source coin’s ‘dirty’ wallet. Lastly, agree to the terms, and start the transaction. If you’ll notice, there is a maximum amount you can exchange at once. Just repeat. Once you’ve clicked on ‘Start Transaction’, you will be given an address that you need to send your Bitcoin Cash to. Copy this address and paste it into your ‘dirty’ wallet, input the amount you want to exchange, and then send it. Once you’ve sent your money, Shapeshift will shortly indicate that it received the funds and will start the exchange process. Sometimes this process is almost immediate, sometimes it can take hours. Always save the URL of this page until the exchange is complete in case an issue arises and you need technical support; it contains your transaction ID which is needed by them to help resolve your issue. Once the transaction is complete, go back to your Monero wallet and make sure the transaction has arrived.
Wait at least 15 minutes, then send XMR from Monero Wallet 1 to Monero Wallet 2
Now you need to exchange your cleaned Monero back into your original currency. To do this, you basically just have to repeat the process you just did, but in reverse. Go back to shapeshift.io, but this time choose Monero as your Deposit address and your Receiving address will be an address from your ‘clean’ wallet. Make sure that when you send your Monero to Shapeshift that you check the highest level of mixing option in the Monero wallet for maximum anonymity. If you’ve got more coins to clean than you can exchange at once, simply repeat this entire procedure until you’ve cleaned them all.
If you used a second OS profile, virtual machine, or something similar, but don’t want to maintain two profiles on your computer, after you’ve exchanged and transferred all of your coins from your old wallet to the new one, remove the old wallet from your main profile. Every wallet has a different uninstall procedure, such as having to remove a config file, so may have to google how to do this. Once the old wallet is fully uninstalled, you now need to reinstall the wallet again but this time you instead want to restore by using the 12 word backup phrase from your ‘clean’ wallet. Finally, after you’ve verified that your new ‘clean’ wallet has been fully restored into your main profile and all of your funds are showing, remove the second profile erasing all traces of the process.
TL,DR:
1. Exchange your currencyinto Monero with Shapeshift.io or https://xmr.to
2. Wait 15 minutes and send to another Monero address
3. Send back to Shapeshift or XMR.to and exchange back into the currency you wish to HODL.Exchanging back to your original currency into a new, never-before-used wallet makes it completely anonymous as long as your computer is secure.
If you want to tip me Monero, you can send it here:
45dmK9uduFx2EJDEVs5XrbiXXjJKWA1fjDMPnqePYKfVUPqDkmBxAVU842KtCZsajkQYN6RPq8ZEfEECZJ8epDE8QYRVNsb
