Bank blocked Exodus purchase

I could never get past the verifications for moonpay or whatever exodus uses. I just buy from coinbase and transfer into exodus.
 
kugelblitz said:


You should be using a self-custody wallet, not another KYC exchange.

So, the path should be KYC exchange - > Self-custody wallet (single use, or at least dedicated to grey market) - > Vendor.

The reason to do this is to give your KYC exchange legal plausible deniability, and make it more difficult for the feds to credibly accuse you of anything.

When you pay your vendor from your KYC exchange account, they have a permanent immutable record of you doing something that is not fully legal. In the future when political winds change and feds give them a list of accounts that paid a pep vendor, you're done. Remember, the blockchain is forever.

When you go via an in-between self-custody account, if anyone says anything you can just say you sent the crypto to a friend and you're not responsible for how they spent it. Feds now have to prove that you own the self-custody account, and if you don't blab, they can't.

Also, you can easily completely break the link between you and the peps. You buy KYC coins, you swap them to Monero (aka XMR, fully privacy encrypted coin), then swap it for the coin that the vendor wants.

Anyone who looks at this later simply sees your coins going into the void that is XMR, and on the other side, anyone who looks at the vendor's wallet just sees them coming from a void that is XMR. That's what I do, and what everyone should be doing, but since it's already a struggle to get people to stop sending coins from KYC accounts to vendors, one issue at a time.

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So is Exodus not a good account to pay vendors from? I got Exodus specifically for grey, I'm not planning on keeping any money in it or having it linked to anything else. The only reason I went with Exodus specifically is because a lot of people on here recommended it, so I'm not like attached to it or anything. I don't even have any coins in it or anything yet.

Monero sounds interesting, I'll look into it more when I get everything else sorted out, because either way it seems like I'll need to get my ID renewed since I'll have to do that to send crypto from Robinhood to whatever I decide on. But don't you still end up using your own wallet to pay in the end? Or are there wallets that are also encrypted/anonymous, or is it just P2P exchanges that can be? Sorry if these are dumb questions, I have a very basic basic understanding of this stuff. And then any time I look deeper into it, I just get even more confused.

Would you recommend the Monero GUI wallet for someone who clearly has no clue what they're doing, or would one of the non custodial wallets like Cake or Stack be easier to navigate/figure out? I'm wondering if I could send crypto from Robinhood to one of the other accounts, exchange it to XMR, then to whatever the vendor wants, and send from there? Or do you just keep hopping from wallet to wallet with each exchange?

Tbh though, if the feds ever came after me, nothing I do with crypto will make a difference. I've been buying from American resellers using my normal debit card for the last three or four years. Obviously I don't want to make it easy for them, but my main reason for trying to figure out crypto (and grey) is mostly to save money and buy bigger vials.

Sorry this post is all over the place lol, I'm reading about Monero as I'm writing all this so I'm adding and editing as I go.
 
Rolltide61 said:


Can you expand on this. This is fascinating.

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Monero (XMR) is a fully encrypted privacy coin. The blockchain is public (like all other crypto) but the contents of the chain are encrypted. This means that sending address, receiving address, and the amount sent cannot be learned from observing the blockchain. At most, an investigator can say that you are using Monero (which is not illegal). Unlike other coins with privacy features, on Monero privacy is mandatory, you cannot turn it off. This also means that it is hard to make a mistake that reveals who you are.

From the perspective of an investigator, once the a coin gets swapped to Monero, it disappears. There are no known methods to fully unmask Monero users. There some methods that a determined adversary can make Monero slightly less private, but doing so it difficult, complex, expensive, and requires long time and lots of effort. On transparent blockchains (most other coins) this is trivial, you just look up the address.

The way you would do this is you buy any KYC coin (I personally buy LTC or BCH, but anything is fine). You than go to a swap service that will give you Monero for your KYC coin. You can find the best swap rates using an aggregator such as https://orangefren.com. There are no accounts, the swap service just tells you to what address to send your money, and you tell it where to send your Monero. Once you have Monero, there's nobody who can trace this money. Even if the swap service is seized and all its records seized, all they can do is say you use Monero which is not illegal. Once you have your Monero, it'd be ideal to pay with it, but most pep vendors are OPSEC amateurs and don't accept it, which is infuriating, but you can use a swap service again to swap it to the coin the vendor wants.

If you do this, there is no way to prove you bought any peps.

J.Ayden said:


So is Exodus not a good account to pay vendors from? I got Exodus specifically for grey, I'm not planning on keeping any money in it or having it linked to anything else. The only reason I went with Exodus specifically is because a lot of people on here recommended it, so I'm not like attached to it or anything. I don't even have any coins in it or anything yet.

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The absolute worst thing to do if to pay directly from your KYC exchange. So let's say you have a Robinhood account, couple of stocks in there, and it is tied to your bank account. If you then buy a transparent coin in that account, and directly pay a pep vendor, you have made a permanent record of you doing something less than legal, and tied it directly to your main banking infrastructure. Blockchains are permanent, and eventually the government will get mad about peps, and the exchange will, at best, mass-ban accounts that are linked to pep vendors. You then lose your main Robinhood account, your stocks, and potentially even Robinhood tells your bank, and they freeze your funds. This is a nigtmare scenario. Don't do this, you will regret it.

A slightly better approach is to buy the coins on a segregated account that has no ties to your other normal banking infrastrucure. This is where Exodus comes in. This is better than the above approach because you can treat the Exodus account as a throwaway account; if it gets banned who cares. But to buy coins on Exodus, you still gotta verify (this is called doing the KYC) and when you do the KYC, you tie your real life identity to the less than legal pep purchase. Maybe the government will never care, but maybe we have another war on drugs, and now next thing your know you have feds knocking on your door about illegal Chinese chemicals.

Even better approach is to buy the coins on a KYC platform such as Exodus, and then open a self-custody account that nobody knows about. There is no paper trail anywhere tying you to this self-custody address. Then you move your coins there, and from there pay the vendor. In the future, when the feds start caring, they can see that this account paid the vendor, but there are no records of who owns it. Sure, they can trace the coins back to you, but if anyone asks you anything you deny any knowledge of the self-custody account. Say that your friend who left the country bought the coins for cash. The feds now need to prove that the self-custody account is yours, and if you don't blab, they can't.

Then finally, the best method is using Monero to break the link, as I've outlined above, but even just using the third method I mentioned above (throwaway KYC account -> self-custody account you deny any knowledge of) is still a sizable step up.

J.Ayden said:


But don't you still end up using your own wallet to pay in the end? Or are there wallets that are also encrypted/anonymous, or is it just P2P exchanges that can be?

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When you swap to Monero, there's no way to tell who controls the coins. It doesn't matter that you bought the coins with your ID, because there's no way to tell what you spent Monero on (or if you spent it at all). You can think of transparent coins like a gift card, while Monero is cash. To get a giftcard, you have to have to give the store your details (let's imagine you can't buy physical cards in this world), but then you turn around and sell the giftcard for cash to a friend. This cash now has no links with the original giftcard (except, with a giftcard/cash thing, your friend could snitch, while with Monero, that is mathematically impossible).

J.Ayden said:


Would you recommend the Monero GUI wallet for someone who clearly has no clue what they're doing, or would one of the non custodial wallets like Cake or Stack be easier to navigate/figure out? I'm wondering if I could send crypto from Robinhood to one of the other accounts, exchange it to XMR, then to whatever the vendor wants, and send from there? Or do you just keep hopping from wallet to wallet with each exchange?

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Cake and Stack wallet are both fine. I personally use Feather wallet, but that's because I started using Monero before either Stack or Cake existed, and I don't want to change.

Buying KYC coin on any exchange, sending it to Cake/Stack, swapping to Monero, then swapping to whatever vendor wants should be fine. Just make sure that you don't use the same wallet after you swap from Monero. If you for example buy USDT/SOL on KYC exchange, then send it to self-custody Solana wallet, then swap to Monero and from it, if you send the swapped coins to the same USDT/SOL wallet as the wallet where KYC wallet landed you've made the whole exercise pointless. It needs to be a fresh wallet.

This is why I personally buy a different coin on the KYC exchange. Let's say the vendor wants USDT/SOL. I will buy Litecoin (LTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH), swap that to Monero, and then swap Monero to USDT/SOL. That way I can't accidentally lose track of things and send the USDT/SOL to the same wallet that USDT/SOL came from.
 
kugelblitz said:


Monero (XMR) is a fully encrypted privacy coin. The blockchain is public (like all other crypto) but the contents of the chain are encrypted. This means that sending address, receiving address, and the amount sent cannot be learned from observing the blockchain. At most, an investigator can say that you are using Monero (which is not illegal). Unlike other coins with privacy features, on Monero privacy is mandatory, you cannot turn it off. This also means that it is hard to make a mistake that reveals who you are.

From the perspective of an investigator, once the a coin gets swapped to Monero, it disappears. There are no known methods to fully unmask Monero users. There some methods that a determined adversary can make Monero slightly less private, but doing so it difficult, complex, expensive, and requires long time and lots of effort. On transparent blockchains (most other coins) this is trivial, you just look up the address.

The way you would do this is you buy any KYC coin (I personally buy LTC or BCH, but anything is fine). You than go to a swap service that will give you Monero for your KYC coin. You can find the best swap rates using an aggregator such as https://orangefren.com. There are no accounts, the swap service just tells you to what address to send your money, and you tell it where to send your Monero. Once you have Monero, there's nobody who can trace this money. Even if the swap service is seized and all its records seized, all they can do is say you use Monero which is not illegal. Once you have your Monero, it'd be ideal to pay with it, but most pep vendors are OPSEC amateurs and don't accept it, which is infuriating, but you can use a swap service again to swap it to the coin the vendor wants.

If you do this, there is no way to prove you bought any peps.

The absolute worst thing to do if to pay directly from your KYC exchange. So let's say you have a Robinhood account, couple of stocks in there, and it is tied to your bank account. If you then buy a transparent coin in that account, and directly pay a pep vendor, you have made a permanent record of you doing something less than legal, and tied it directly to your main banking infrastructure. Blockchains are permanent, and eventually the government will get mad about peps, and the exchange will, at best, mass-ban accounts that are linked to pep vendors. You then lose your main Robinhood account, your stocks, and potentially even Robinhood tells your bank, and they freeze your funds. This is a nigtmare scenario. Don't do this, you will regret it.

A slightly better approach is to buy the coins on a segregated account that has no ties to your other normal banking infrastrucure. This is where Exodus comes in. This is better than the above approach because you can treat the Exodus account as a throwaway account; if it gets banned who cares. But to buy coins on Exodus, you still gotta verify (this is called doing the KYC) and when you do the KYC, you tie your real life identity to the less than legal pep purchase. Maybe the government will never care, but maybe we have another war on drugs, and now next thing your know you have feds knocking on your door about illegal Chinese chemicals.

Even better approach is to buy the coins on a KYC platform such as Exodus, and then open a self-custody account that nobody knows about. There is no paper trail anywhere tying you to this self-custody address. Then you move your coins there, and from there pay the vendor. In the future, when the feds start caring, they can see that this account paid the vendor, but there are no records of who owns it. Sure, they can trace the coins back to you, but if anyone asks you anything you deny any knowledge of the self-custody account. Say that your friend who left the country bought the coins for cash. The feds now need to prove that the self-custody account is yours, and if you don't blab, they can't.

Then finally, the best method is using Monero to break the link, as I've outlined above, but even just using the third method I mentioned above (throwaway KYC account -> self-custody account you deny any knowledge of) is still a sizable step up.

When you swap to Monero, there's no way to tell who controls the coins. It doesn't matter that you bought the coins with your ID, because there's no way to tell what you spent Monero on (or if you spent it at all). You can think of transparent coins like a gift card, while Monero is cash. To get a giftcard, you have to have to give the store your details (let's imagine you can't buy physical cards in this world), but then you turn around and sell the giftcard for cash to a friend. This cash now has no links with the original giftcard (except, with a giftcard/cash thing, your friend could snitch, while with Monero, that is mathematically impossible).

Cake and Stack wallet are both fine. I personally use Feather wallet, but that's because I started using Monero before either Stack or Cake existed, and I don't want to change.

Buying KYC coin on any exchange, sending it to Cake/Stack, swapping to Monero, then swapping to whatever vendor wants should be fine. Just make sure that you don't use the same wallet after you swap from Monero. If you for example buy USDT/SOL on KYC exchange, then send it to self-custody Solana wallet, then swap to Monero and from it, if you send the swapped coins to the same USDT/SOL wallet as the wallet where KYC wallet landed you've made the whole exercise pointless. It needs to be a fresh wallet.

This is why I personally buy a different coin on the KYC exchange. Let's say the vendor wants USDT/SOL. I will buy Litecoin (LTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH), swap that to Monero, and then swap Monero to USDT/SOL. That way I can't accidentally lose track of things and send the USDT/SOL to the same wallet that USDT/SOL came from.

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You my man are the kind of guy that's nice to know. A true consigliere.

I guess since the gov't is gonna treat us like a drug cartel we need to think like one. At this point we need to start thinking like little Pablo Escobars (w/out the stupid stuff).
 
J.Ayden said:


So I'm getting ready to do my first big boy crypto purchase! I have BTC in Robinhood and can purchase more on Cashapp as well, but I don't really want to pay vendors directly from either of them (especially Robinhood tbh, I have all my stocks tied up there) in case the address or whatever is flagged somehow and gets my accounts shut down. I downloaded Exodus intending to send over what's in my Robinhood account, which I've obviously never tried to do before. Then I realized I can't fucking send any crypto from Robinhood because my goddamn ID expired a couple weeks ago on my birthday. It'll let me buy and sell all the crypto and stocks I want, as long as it stays in their app. That's kinda bullshit to me.

I figured fuck it, I'll just buy the BTC directly on Exodus and deal with the fees or whatever, but no. My fucking bank straight up blocked it?? I got an email saying the purchase was denied, but I could "try other options like ACH" and like idk what that even is. My next option is to buy it on Cashapp and try to send it from there, but that means even more fees, and I'm worried I'll run into the same roadblock with my ID. Plus Cashapp charges a 2% fee just for buying the crypto, unlike Robinhood.

I know obviously the solution is to just get my stupid ID renewed but who knows when I'll have time to take care of all that. >_< Part of the issue is I have this weird...stress? pressure? about stocking up while I can, given everything that's going on with peptides in the US at the moment. I might try to talk my girlfriend into setting up a Robinhood account, and just buy/send BTC from there, since she just got her ID updated a couple months ago. Does anyone know if the risk of sending money directly from Robinhood to vendors is legit? Or am I worrying about nothing? Basically, if I can get her to set up an account, it would be a lot easier to have her make the order/purchase and not worry about sending money to her for the crypto, then send that to my Exodus, then to the vendor from there.

Honestly I hate crypto so much. I treat it as a high risk stock, not as actual money at all. I will admit part of it is due to jealousy/regret because a few of my more techy friends in high school got really into Bitcoin specifically and sometimes I get lost in fantasies about if I had invested back in 2010/2011 when they were using it to buy shit on the dark web or whatever lol. It's also frustrating to me how difficult/impossible it is to use anything but crypto if you want to buy directly from China. That's literally the only reason I've stuck with resellers til now. I kind of wonder how hard it would be for a vendor to set up a fake business/website and only give that link to customers so no one else tries to buy anything from there, opening up "normal" payment methods. Basically, when I was in my early 20s I for some reason really wanted to try clove cigarettes, which are illegal here. So I found a website that sold them from India -- they had a front website with other products which is how you actually paid. You sent them an email with a list of whatever you were wanting to buy and they told you the total price. Then you used the retail site and ordered a bunch of random stuff for the amount you needed to pay and that's where you'd put in your address and all that, and because your bank thought you were buying stuffed animals or whatever, nothing got flagged on either end. I know a lot of vendors used to accept Paypal or Alipay or whatever, but because the products are obviously labeled/listed as peptides, they get shut down.

I don't even know if I'm really looking for any solutions, unless someone knows something I don't. I guess I'm mainly just venting lol. I've literally never, in the almost twenty fucking years of having this bank account, had something blocked completely. It'll sometimes flag things as fraud and I'll get an email asking if it was me, but that's it. They've never just said no before, including buying from multiple resellers! It's so frustrating.

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I'm not going to read all that, but like others say, buy in (kraken/coinbase/whatever) send to your wallet (metamask/exodus/trust wallet/etc) and buy from vendor there.
 
I had the same problem, visa blocked it. So I click on little button on the bottom of the page and it gives me the option to use apple pay. Success!
 
Rolltide61 said:


You my man are the kind of guy that's nice to know. A true consigliere.

I guess since the gov't is gonna treat us like a drug cartel we need to think like one. At this point we need to start thinking like little Pablo Escobars (w/out the stupid stuff).

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In my view, the biggest issue is that most blockchains are transparent and all are permanent, and you're leaving irrefutable evidence. Things may be chill now, but what if things change? The current administration is chill about crypto, but when things change, the next administration could flip the script and start going after people to differentiate themselves from the current one, and claim they're cracking down on drugs, and pep customers buying via KYC exchanges are the lowest of the low hanging fruits.

There are people like Chainalysis who have incredibly advanced tooling and could likely give the government a list of damn nearly every pep purchaser with less than afternoon of work, and the government could give that list to every mayor KYC exchange and have them filter for their customers. With the right political will, a team of interns could run this investigation and secure convictions, it is trivial.

I agree that as things stand now, Monero is likely overkill, but things will change from under us, and we have to be ready.
 
kugelblitz said:


I agree that as things stand now, Monero is likely overkill, but things will change from under us, and we have to be ready.

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You are exactly right. It's better to have things in order now, to pay just a little extra, in order to stay in business. One day the crackdown may come and most will be standing there w/ their pants down, all their accounts frozen and eventually their house ransacked by LE.

Checked out Orange Fren and getting ready for my first swap. But first a question: Since I have already used my exodus wallet for purchases do I consider it now compromised and that I need to open a new wallet?
 
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