4 Best Bitcoin Privacy Products Everyone Should Know About
A lot of people still think Bitcoin as a private and anonymous
payment network, when in reality it is one if not the most transparent
payment network in the whole world. And there are many ways you can leak
your precious financial data that could lead to identifying your
Bitcoin transaction activity on the network.
However, with a proper understanding of the technology one can
mitigate and indeed use the network in a very private and anonymous way.
But this requires the use of the right tools, services, and habits that
must be in place in order for Bitcoin to actually provide strong base
level anonymity.
This also means that it is your responsibility to learn the
risks and mitigate them by using the right software and best practices
in order to protect your privacy.
Once a Bitcoin address is connected to your real-world identity,
anyone with a few clicks of a button can get an insight into your full
transaction history within the Bitcoin blockchain.
The lack of privacy within Bitcoin network also creates an additional
problem regarding fungibility, because the transactions are open to
everyone if, for example, you receive Bitcoins by anyhow, that are tied
to illegal activities, certain parties could deem these coins to be
dirty, and therefore less valuable then clean Bitcoins.
Although the chances of such happening to you are slight, it is still
important to learn the best privacy-enhancing tools in order to break
and obfuscate your transaction history.
That being said, in this article we’re gonna look at some of these
privacy-enhancing tools, products, and services we think every Bitcoiner
should know about.
1. Samourai Wallet (Whirlpool)
Samourai Wallet is the most advanced privacy-focused, open-source
Bitcoin mobile wallet today. The wallet offers its own implementation of
CoinJoin, called whirlpool that can be used to anonymize users’
Bitcoins.
The wallet is built by privacy activists who have dedicated their
lives to creating this incredible piece of software that Bitcoin truly
deserves.
Samourai was a pioneer in incorporating segwit, and it’s developers
are the front fighters of decentralization, security, financial privacy,
and fungibility.
Samourai doesn’t just have the best CoinJoin
implementation(Whirpool), but by default, it also comes with a large
number of other incredible transaction enhancing features that can truly
change the way we look at Bitcoins privacy today.
Some of these features include a completely separate and configurable
Dojo server, full offline mode, STONEWALL, PayNyms, Ricochet, and
Whirlpool.
Not only the wallet can be used like any regular Bitcoin wallet but
it’s built-in features such as Whirpool make sure anyone can properly
anonymize their Bitcoins when it’s needed.
Note that some of the Samourai’s advanced tools, might be difficult to use for newbies.
2. Wasabi Wallet (CoinJoin Software)
Wasabi is an open-source, privacy-focused Bitcoin desktop wallet with
a trustless CoinJoin implementation, that can be used to anonymize your
Bitcoins.
Similar to Samourai Wasabi as well is build to by privacy enthusiasts
who are dedicated to benefiting the Bitcoin blockchain space by
providing tools that help users reclaim their privacy, and make Bitcoins
more fungible.
With Wasabi users can send, and receive Bitcoins, stay in full
control of their private keys. And although Wasabi is far easier for
average users to use then Samourai, the core design is still pure magic
when it comes to anonymizing your coins.
The CoinJoin feature is built directly on the Wasabi wallet, and can
also be used straight away once users launch the app without further
settings or tinkering.
How to Anonymize Your Bitcoin Using Wasabi Wallet & CoinJoin
3. OXT – The people’s blockexplorer
OXT is an high level interactive unfiltered map of the whole Bitcoin blockchain.
Unlike regular Bitcoin block explorers, OXT, lets users see so-called
landscape details, and metrics, currently unavailable elsewhere.
The platform is designed with a feature-rich desktop browser
application, which means that it makes intensive use of HTML5 and
Javascript. Web browsers local storage, for data caching is also
required in order to use all the features.
The site also provides a variety of different blockchain metrics, and
charts ranging from blocks, transactions, fees, addresses,
distribution, and more.
One of the exciting features of OTX for example is the ability to
browse known directories, meaning users can with a click of a button
discover Bitcoin addresses of the largest known entities, and see
exactly how many coins there are.
Some of these entities include Bitcoin faucets, mining pools, dark
markets, to everything from the largest Bitcoin exchanges and more.
4. Know Your Coin Privacy (KYCP)
Know Your Coin Privacy (KYCP) is a web browser-based online privacy
explorer tool, that lets users visually inspect the entire history of
their coin’s privacy using a single UTXO.
The platform gives anyone the ability to search Bitcoin transactions
ID:s and then visually see the degree of privacy in the transactions,
and how it’s linked to other transactions with various metrics.
These measures can for example then be used to determine the quality of privacy within joint transactions such as CoinJoins.
The site also provides a half of fame Bitcoin address list with
popular and known transactions, that users can look up to, in order to
get started using the platform.
Although KYCP does not see your searches, as it has no way to log any
of the data. Proper use of VPN and Tor are always suggested when
browsing personal transactions.
KYCP also has all of it’s hosting files available and auditable on Github.
Bonus: All Private keys
All Private Keys, is a Bitcoin private key database and search analysis tool.
To this day the site has collected leaked Bitcoin private keys from a
variety of different sources, including Github, forums, search engines,
and more. And currently, it holds over 1889807 leaked keys in their database.
Through the platform, users can check and learn a variety of safety
measures regarding private keys, blockchains, and what algorithms can
do.
However one of the most useful tools regarding this platform is
probably the ability for anyone to search Bitcoin addresses, and see if
they are mentioned on public forums, or whether some of the addresses
have a relationship to scams and more.
Users can also check their own address in the database, and see If
the private key is secure. Alternatively, the platform also provides
monitoring and warns about any leaks by email.
Bonus: Have I Been Known? (HIBK)
Have I been Known? (HIBK) is a new Bitcoin address search analysis tool against surveillance.
Though the use of platform users can quickly by searching to see if
the address has any privacy issues and whether it has been made public
through one way or another.
Although HIBK just launched recently and is still fairly new, the
platform has a deep focus on the fungibility of Bitcoin and provides a
great deal of information regarding the threat posed by Big brother and
surveillance state.
What is CoinJoin?
A CoinJoin is a special Bitcoin transaction where multiple peers
combine their transactions together in order to spend these coins in a
single transaction. This way from looking outside, as each transaction
equals the exact same amounts of inputs, and outputs, it’s almost
impossible to define which Bitcoins belong to who.
The goal of CoinJoin transactions is always to gain more privacy by
breaking the link to the original chain of inputs. Therefore it’s also
very important after the completed CoinJoin transaction that no coins
are spent with non Conjoined coins, as this would link the coins, and
break the just gained privacy.
Currently, two of the easiest ways to do CoinJoin transactions securely is to use either Samourai’s Whirpool or Wasabi wallet, as they both enable non-custodial trustless and private ways of doing this properly.
Ways to mitigate risk, and improve privacy
To start, first, you must realize what is your threat model, and what
is it that you are hiding from. Obviously, for each people this is
different, and therefore you should be able to answer this question
yourself.
Here’s a quick summary with some general information and thoughts
that you might want to consider and improve when it comes to privacy in
your day to day life when using Bitcoin.
- Understand Bitcoin traceability, and do not reuse addresses.
Bitcoin address should only be used once to receive money, and never to
be used again after the money is spent. - Try to avoid revealing
real information about yourself when transacting, many of the exchanges
for example do not require you to fill KYC documents for trading
Bitcoin. - Browse and broadcast transactions in the Bitcoin space
through either TOR or by using proper Bitcoin VPN, in order to hide your
computer’s IP address. - Run Bitcoin full node, or light wallet, never leave your coins in hot wallets, such as Coinbase.
- Break the surveillance of your coins by using correctly implemented Coinjoin, such as Samourai or Wasabi.
- Use
proper wallet like Electrum when transacting in order to avoid creating
change addresses, and spend the entire UTXO always if possible. - Understand
by default when using Windows, you have no privacy, to begin with,
consider using better more privacy-focused Linux solutions like Tails and Qubes OS.
To sum up
Over the few years, Bitcoin privacy-enhancing features have developed
rapidly, not only Samourai, and Wasabi have raised the bar for other
projects but they’ve also come up with new industry standards that
should be realized by a larger community
Things like PayNyms and Conjoined transactions shouldn’t be a thing
few wallets are specialized with, but something totally ordinary,
because as the more people participate, the more privacy the Bitcoin
community can gain as a whole.
So now it’s time to hear from you, let us know what you think in the comment section below.
And feel free to check some of these related articles, you might find them interesting:
- How to Make Your Computer Ultra Secure with Encryption & Tor
- How to Anonymize Your Bitcoin Using Wasabi Wallet & CoinJoin
- Best Bitcoin VPN Services | 8 Top Solutions Available in 2020
- 30 Best Crypto Exchanges Without KYC Verification in 2020